by Jo Nesbo
“Hungover.”
“We’re launching an immediate investigation.”
“Forget it. Go home and get a few hours’ shut-eye.”
“You’re cheerful all of a sudden.”
“I’m a good actor, aren’t I.” He rubbed his face with his hands.
“This isn’t a joke, Harry. Do you realize you’ve been poisoned by CO2?”
“No more than the average Bangkok citizen, according to the doctor. I mean it, Liz. Go home, I haven’t got the energy to talk to you anymore. I’ll be fine by tomorrow.”
“Take tomorrow off.”
“As you wish. Just go.”
Harry had knocked back the pills the doctor had given him, slept without dreams and didn’t wake until late morning when Liz phoned to see how he was. He grunted by way of an answer.
“I don’t want to see you today,” she said.
“I love you too,” he said, rang off and got up to dress.
It was the hottest day of the year and at the police station everyone was groaning. Even in Liz’s office the air-conditioning system couldn’t keep up. Harry’s nose had started peeling and he was looking like a rival to Rudolph. He was halfway down his third liter bottle of water.
“If this is the cold season what’s the—?”
“All right, Harry.” Liz didn’t look as if she thought talking about the heat would make it any more bearable. “What about Woo, Nho? Any clues?”
“Nothing. I had a serious talk with Mr. Sorensen at Thai Indo Travelers. He says he doesn’t know where Woo is, he’s no longer employed by the firm.”
Liz sighed. “And we have no idea what he did in Harry’s apartment. Nice. What about Brekke?”
Sunthorn had got hold of the caretaker in the block where Brekke lived. In fact, he could remember the Norwegian had come home some time after midnight on the night in question, but he couldn’t say precisely when.
Liz informed them that Forensics was already busy combing through Brekke’s office and apartment. They were examining his clothes and shoes in particular to see if they could find something—blood, hair, fibers, anything—that could connect Brekke with the murder victim or crime scene.
“Meanwhile,” Rangsan said, “I have a couple of comments to make about the photos we found in Molnes’s briefcase.”
He pinned up three magnified photos on a board beside the door. Even though the images had churned around long enough in Harry’s brain for them to lose some of their initial shock effect, he could feel his stomach heave.
“We sent them to the Vice Squad to see what they could make of them. They can’t connect the photos with any known distributors of child pornography.” Rangsan turned one of the images. “Firstly, they were developed on German paper which is not sold in Thailand. Secondly, they’re a bit unclear and at first sight reminiscent of private amateur snaps not intended for distribution. Forensics spoke to an expert who stated that they were taken from a distance with a telephoto lens and probably from outside. He thinks this is a window sash.”
Rangsan pointed to a gray shadow at the edge of the picture. “The fact that the photos are still professional suggests there is a new niche market to be catered for, the peeping Tom segment.”
“So?”
“In America the porn industry earns huge sums selling these so-called private amateur snaps, which are actually created by professional actors and photographers who intentionally make everything look amateur by using simple equipment and avoiding the most dolled-up models. It turns out that people are willing to pay more for what they think are authentic bedroom shots. The same is true for pictures and videos that appear to have been taken from a flat across the street without the subjects’ knowledge or agreement. The latter appeals particularly to peeping Toms, people who get off on seeing others while imagining they’re unobserved. We think these photos fall into this category.”
“Or,” Harry said. “Or it could be the photos weren’t meant to be distributed; they’re taken for blackmail purposes.”
Rangsan shook his head. “We’ve considered that, but if so the adults ought to be identifiable in the picture. A typical feature of commercial child pornography is that the abusers’ faces are concealed, like here.”
He pointed to the three photos. You could make out the bottom and the lower part of someone’s back. The person was naked apart from a red jumper, on which they could see the bottom of a figure 2 and a zero.
“Suppose it was still going to be used for blackmail but the photographer didn’t include the face,” Harry said. “Or he just showed the blackmail target copies where he couldn’t be identified.”
“Stop!” Liz waved with one hand. “What are you saying, Harry? That the man in the photo is Molnes?”
“It’s a theory. He was being blackmailed but couldn’t pay because of his gambling debts.”
“So?” Rangsan said. “That doesn’t give the blackmailer a motive to murder Molnes.”
“He might have threatened to report the blackmailer to the police.”
“Report the blackmailer and then be convicted for pedophilia?” Rangsan rolled his eyes, and Sunthorn and Nho made poor attempts to conceal their smiles.
Harry hunched his shoulders and raised his hands. “As I said, it was a theory, and I agree we should drop it. The second theory is that Molnes was the blackmailer—”
“And Brekke is the abuser …” Liz rested her chin on her hands, gazing thoughtfully into the air. “Well, Molnes needed the money, and that gives Brekke a motive for murder. But he already had one, so that doesn’t really get us anywhere. What do you think, Rangsan? Is it possible to rule out the possibility that it’s Brekke in the photos?”
He shook his head. “The photos are so unclear we can’t rule out anyone unless Brekke has any defining features.”
“Who will volunteer to go and check Brekke’s ass?” Liz asked to general laughter.
Sunthorn coughed discreetly. “If Brekke murdered Molnes because of the photos why did he leave them?”
Long silence.
“Is it only me who feels we’re wasting our time?” Liz asked at length.
The air-conditioning gurgled and it struck Harry that the day was going to be as long as it was hot.
Harry stood in the doorway to the ambassador’s garden.
“Harry?” Runa blinked water from her eyes and stepped out of the pool.
“Hi,” he said. “Your mother’s asleep.”
She shrugged.
“We’ve arrested Jens Brekke.”
He waited for her to say something, ask why, but she said nothing. He sighed. “I don’t mean to pester you with these things, Runa. But I’m sitting in the middle of it, and so are you, so I was wondering if we could help each other.”
“Right,” she said. Harry tried to interpret her tone. He decided to get straight to the point.
“I have to try and find out a bit more about him, what type of person he is, whether he’s what he purports to be and so on. I thought I could start with his relationship with your mother. I mean, there’s quite a big age gap …”
“You suspect he’s exploiting her?”
“That sort of thing, yes.”
“My mother might be exploiting him, but the other way around …?”
Harry sat down in one of the chairs beneath the willow tree, but Runa remained standing.
“Mum doesn’t like me being around when they’re together, so I’ve never really got to know him.”
“You know him better than I do.”
“Do I? Hm. He seems smooth, but perhaps that’s just the outside. At least he tries to be nice to me. It was his idea, for example, to take me to the boxing. I think he has it in his head that I’m interested in sport because of my diving. Does he exploit her? I don’t know. Sorry, this isn’t a lot of help, but I don’t know how men of that age think. You don’t exactly show your feelings …”
Harry straightened his sunglasses. “Thank you, that’s great, Runa. Can you ask your mother to ring m
e when she wakes up?”
She stood beside the pool with her back to the water, launched herself and performed another somersault for him with an arched spine and her head down. He saw the bubbles bursting on the surface as he turned to leave.
After lunch, Harry and Nho took the lift down to the first floor, where Jens Brekke was still being held.
Brekke was wearing the suit he had been arrested in, but he had unbuttoned the shirt and rolled up the sleeves and no longer looked like a broker. A sweaty fringe was stuck to his forehead, and he was staring, as if in surprise, at the hands lying inactive on the table in front of him.
“This is Nho, a colleague of mine,” Harry said.
Brekke looked up, put on a brave face and nodded.
“I have only one question actually,” Nho said. “Did you accompany the ambassador down to the underground car park where he was parked on Tuesday the seventh of January at five o’clock?”
Brekke looked at Harry, then at Nho.
“I did,” he said.
Nho looked at Harry and nodded.
“Thank you,” Harry said. “That was all.”
28
Friday, January 17
The traffic was crawling along, Harry had a headache and the air-conditioning was whistling ominously. Nho stopped at the car-park barrier to Barclays Thailand, rolled down the car window and was told by a man in a neatly pressed uniform that Jim Love was not at work.
Nho showed his police ID and explained that they would like to see one of the video cassettes, but the attendant shook his head disapprovingly and said they would have to ring the security company. Nho turned to Harry and shrugged.
“Explain to him that this is a murder investigation,” Harry said.
“I have done.”
“Then we’ll have to do some more explaining.”
Harry got out of the car. The heat and the humidity hit him in the face; it was like taking the lid off a saucepan of boiling water. He stretched, ambled around the car, already a bit dizzy. The attendant frowned as almost two meters of red-eyed farang approached, and he put his hand on his gun.
Harry stood in front of him, grimaced and grabbed the man’s belt with his left hand. The attendant yelled, but he didn’t have a chance to react before Harry had undone the belt and stuffed his right hand down the man’s trousers. The attendant was raised off the ground as Harry tugged. His underpants gave way with a loud ripping sound. Nho shouted something, but it was too late. Harry was already holding white boxers aloft in triumph. The next moment they were sailing over the attendant’s hut and into the bushes. Then he walked slowly around the car and got back in.
“Old school trick,” he said to a wide-eyed Nho. “You’ll have to take over the negotiations from here. Bloody hell, it’s hot …”
Nho jumped out of the car, and after a short parley he poked his head back in the car, nodded and Harry followed the other two down into the basement, while the attendant kept a glowering eye on, and a suitable distance from Harry.
The video player hummed, and Harry lit a cigarette. He had some notion that nicotine in certain situations stimulated the mental processes. Like when you needed a smoke.
“Right,” Harry said. “So you think Brekke’s telling the truth?”
“You do too,” Nho said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have brought me down here.”
“Correct.” The smoke made Harry’s eyes smart. “And here you can see why I think that.”
Nho looked at the pictures, gave up and shook his head.
“This cassette is from Monday the thirteenth of January,” Harry said. “At about ten in the evening.”
“Wrong,” Nho said. “This is the same recording we saw last time from the day of the murder, the seventh of January. The date’s even on the edge of the picture.”
Harry blew out a smoke ring, but there was a draft coming from somewhere and it collapsed at once.
“It’s the same recording, but the date’s always been wrong. My guess is our pantless friend here can confirm it’s easy for them to change the date and the time on the machine and therefore on the picture.”
Nho looked at the attendant, who shrugged and nodded.
“But that doesn’t explain how you know when this recording was made,” Nho said.
Harry nodded toward the monitor. “I realized when I was woken up this morning by the traffic on Taksin Bridge outside the flat where I’m staying,” he said. “There was too little traffic. This is a six-story car park in a busy business complex. It’s between four and five o’clock and we see two cars pass in an hour.”
Harry flicked the ash of his cigarette.
“The next thing I thought about was these.” He got up and pointed at the screen to the black lines on the cement. “Tracks of wet tires. From both cars. When were there last wet roads in Bangkok?”
“Two months ago, if not longer.”
“Wrong. Three days ago, the thirteenth of January, between ten and half past, there was a mango shower. I know because most of it went inside my shirt.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Nho said. He frowned. “But these video recorders never stop. If this recording is not the seventh of January but the thirteenth, it must mean the cassette that should be there for that time had been taken out.”
Harry asked the attendant to find the cassette with January 13 on, and thirty seconds later they could see the recording had been stopped at 21:30. Followed by a five-second snowstorm before the picture settled down again.
“The cassette was taken out here,” Harry said. “The pictures we can see now are what was on the cassette before.” He indicated the date. “The first of January 05:25.”
Harry asked the attendant to freeze the picture and they sat looking at it while Harry finished his cigarette.
Nho pressed his palms together in front of his mouth. “So someone here has fixed a cassette so that it looks as if the ambassador’s car has never been in the car park. Why?”
Harry didn’t answer. He looked at the time. 05:25. Thirty-five minutes before the new year reached Oslo. Where had he been? What had he been doing? Had he been at Schrøder’s? No, it must have been closed. He must have been asleep then. At any rate he couldn’t remember any fireworks.
The security company was able to confirm that Jim Love had had the night shift on the thirteenth of January, and they gave Nho his address and telephone number without a murmur. Nho rang Love’s place, but no one answered.
“Send a patrol car there and check,” Liz said. She seemed elated to have something concrete to go on at last.
Sunthorn came into the office and handed her a file.
“Jim Love doesn’t have a record,” he said. “But Maisan, one of the undercover guys in Narco, recognized the description. If it’s the same guy he’s been seen at Miss Duyen’s several times.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Harry asked.
“It means he wasn’t necessarily as innocent in that opium story as he made out,” Nho said.
“Miss Duyen’s is an opium den in Chinatown,” Liz explained.
“Opium den? Isn’t that, erm … illegal?”
“Of course.”
“Sorry, stupid question,” Harry said. “But I thought the police were fighting that sort of thing.”
“I don’t know what it’s like where you come from, Harry, but we try to be practical. If we shut down Miss Duyen’s, another opium den would open somewhere else next week. Or those guys just do it in the street. The advantage with Miss Duyen’s is that we have control, the undercover guys can come and go as they please and the people who choose to scramble their brains with opium can do so in relatively respectable surroundings.”
There was a cough.
“Plus Miss Duyen probably pays well,” a voice mumbled from behind the Bangkok Post.
Liz pretended not to hear.
“Since he hasn’t turned up for work today and he’s not at home, I bet he’s lying on one of Miss Duyen’s bamboo mats. Why don’t
you and Harry take a peek, Nho? Talk to Maisan; he’ll be able to give you a hand. Could be good for our tourist to see something.”
29
Friday, January 17
Maisan and Harry walked into a narrow street where a redhot breeze blew the litter alongside the fragile house walls. Nho stayed in the car because Maisan thought he stank of cop from miles off. Besides, he was worried they might be suspicious at Miss Duyen’s if three people turned up at once.
“Smoking opium is not really a social thing,” Maisan explained in an approximation of an American accent. Harry wondered if the accent and the Doors T-shirt weren’t a bit over the top for an undercover narc cop. Maisan stopped in front of an open wrought-iron gate doubling as a door, stamped his cigarette butt into the tarmac with his right boot heel and entered.
Coming in from the bright sunlight, Harry couldn’t see anything at first, but he could hear low, muttering voices and followed two backs disappearing into a room.
“Shit!” Harry hit his head on the door frame and turned when he heard familiar laughter. In the darkness by the wall he thought he could discern a huge shape, but he could have been mistaken. Woo was probably keeping a low profile today. He hurried along so as not to lose the two in front. They disappeared down a staircase and Harry jogged after them. Banknotes were changing hands and the door opened enough for them to squeeze in.
Inside it stank of earth, piss, smoke and sweet opium.
Harry’s only idea of an opium den came from a Sergio Leone film, in which Robert De Niro was tended to by women wearing silk sarongs, all lying on soft beds with big cushions; everything was lit by a forgiving, yellow light which gave the whole scene a sacred feel. At least that was how he remembered it. Apart from the muted light, there was little that was reminiscent of Hollywood. The dust floating in the air made it hard to breathe, and with the exception of a few bunk beds lining the walls everyone was lying on rugs and bamboo mats on the hard earthen floor.
The darkness and the clammy air which resounded with muffled coughs and throaty rasps led Harry to assume there were only a handful of people inside, but gradually, as his eyes became accustomed to the light, he could see it was a large, open room and there must have been a hundred people, almost all men. Apart from the coughing, it was eerily quiet. Most appeared to be asleep, others barely moved. He saw an old man holding a pipe with both hands while inhaling so hard the creased skin around his cheekbones tightened.
