The Cockroaches

by Jo Nesbo

  “If the sentences are so strict here, why are there so many pedophiles?”

  “The authorities want Thailand to get rid of its reputation as an Eldorado for pedophiles. It damages legitimate tourism. But inside the police force it isn’t a high priority because arresting foreigners only brings trouble.”

  “So the result is that the authorities work against one another?”

  Tonje burst into a beaming smile, which Harry realized was not intended for him but one of the “everyone” passing behind him.

  “Yes and no,” she said. “Some cooperate. The authorities in Sweden and Denmark have, for example, come to an agreement with the Thai government whereby they can station police officers here to investigate specific cases where Swedes or Danes are involved. They have also passed laws that Swedish and Danish nationals can be convicted in their respective countries for abuse of minors in Thailand.”

  “And Norway?”

  Tonje shrugged. “We don’t have an agreement yet. I know that Norwegian police have pushed for an equivalent arrangement, but I don’t think they quite appreciate the extent of what is going on in Pattaya and Bangkok. Have you seen the children walking around selling chewing gum?”

  Harry nodded. The area around the go-go bars in Patpong was teeming with them.

  “That’s the code. The chewing gum means they’re for sale.”

  Harry realized with a shudder that he’d bought a packet of Wrigley’s off a barefoot, black-eyed boy, who had looked terrified, but Harry had put that down to the crowds and the noise.

  “Ivar Løken, the man you pointed out at the funeral reception. Ex-military, you said? Can you tell me any more about his interest in photography? Have you seen any of his pictures?”

  “No, but I’ve seen his equipment and that’s impressive enough.”

  Her cheeks reddened a touch as it occurred to her why Harry had involuntarily smiled.

  “And these trips to Indochina, do you know for certain that’s where he went?”

  “For certain? Why would he lie?”

  “Any idea why he might?”

  She folded her arms as if she thought it had turned chilly. “Not really. How was the tea?”

  “I have to ask you a favor, Tonje.”

  “And that is?”

  “An invitation to dinner.”

  She looked up in surprise.

  “If you have time,” he added.

  She gave a mischievous smile again. “My appointments book is at your disposal, Harry. Any time at all.”

  “Fine.” Harry sucked his teeth. “I was wondering if you could invite Ivar Løken to dinner tonight between seven and ten.”

  She knew how to maintain a mask well enough to avoid too much embarrassment. After he had explained the background, she even agreed. Harry clinked the porcelain a bit more, said he had to be going and made a sudden, clumsy exit.

  32

  Saturday, January 18

  Anyone can break into a house—all you do is stick a jimmy in the door frame next to the lock and lean against it until the splinters fly. But breaking in, with the emphasis on “in” and not “breaking,” in such a way that the occupant is not aware he has had uninvited guests, is an art. An art which Sunthorn had mastered to perfection, it transpired.

  Ivar Løken lived in an apartment complex on the other side of Phra Pinklao Bridge, and Sunthorn and Harry had been parked outside for almost an hour when they saw him leave. They waited for ten minutes until they were sure that Løken wouldn’t come back for something he had forgotten.

  The security was somewhat relaxed. Two uniformed men stood by the garage door chatting; they glanced up, registered a white man and a relatively well-dressed Thai go over to the lift, and resumed their conversation.

  When Harry and Sunthorn were in front of Løken’s door on the thirteenth floor, or 12B as it said on the lift button, Sunthorn took out two picklocks, one in each hand, which he inserted in the lock. He removed them almost at once.

  “Take it easy,” Harry whispered. “Don’t get stressed. We’ve got all the time in the world. Try some other picklocks.”

  “I haven’t got any others.”

  Sunthorn smiled and pushed the door open.

  Harry couldn’t believe it. Perhaps Nho hadn’t been joking when he hinted darkly about Sunthorn’s occupation before he joined the police. But if he hadn’t been a lawbreaker before, he certainly was now, Harry thought, as he took off his shoes and stepped into the darkened flat. Liz had explained that to get a search warrant they needed the signature of a lawyer and that would have meant informing the Chief of Police. She thought that might be problematic as he had expressly ordered them to focus all their efforts on Jens Brekke. Harry had pointed out he wasn’t under the Chief’s jurisdiction and he would hang around Løken’s flat to see if there was anything going on. She had got the picture and responded that she wanted to know as little as possible about Harry’s plans. However, she commented that Sunthorn was often good company.

  “Go down to the car and wait,” Harry whispered. “If Løken turns up, call his number from the car phone and let it ring three times, no more, OK?”

  Sunthorn nodded and was gone.

  Harry switched on the light after making sure there were no windows overlooking the street, located the telephone and checked the dial tone. Then he had a look around. It was a bachelor pad, devoid of all ornaments and warmth. Three bare walls, the fourth covered with bookshelves packed with books, both vertical and horizontal, and a modest portable TV. The natural center in the large room was a wooden table with trestles for legs and an architect’s lamp.

  In a corner there were two open photographic bags and a camera stand leaning against the wall. The table was covered with strips of paper, presumably offcuts, because there were two pairs of scissors, one large and one small, in the middle.

  Two cameras, a Leica and a Nikon F5 with a telephoto lens, stared blindly up at Harry. Beside them were night-vision binoculars. Harry had seen them before; they were an Israeli brand he had used on surveillance jobs. The batteries reinforced all the external light sources and allowed you to see, even in what to the naked eye appeared as total darkness.

  A door in the flat led to the bedroom. The bed was unmade, so he assumed Løken belonged to the minority of foreigners in Bangkok who didn’t have a house help. It didn’t cost much, and Harry had been given to understand that foreigners were almost expected to contribute to employment in the country in this way.

  Off the bedroom was an en suite bathroom.

  He switched on the light and immediately realized why Løken didn’t have a house help.

  The bathroom clearly also served as a darkroom. It reeked of chemicals and the walls were plastered with black-and-white photographs. A row of photos had been hung up to dry from a piece of string running across the bath. They showed a man in profile from the chest down and Harry could now see that it wasn’t a window sash blocking the shot: the upper part of the window was an intricate glass mosaic with lotus and Buddha motifs.

  A boy who could hardly have been more than ten was being forced to perform fellatio, and the camera had zoomed in so close that Harry could see his eyes. They were blank, distant and apparently unseeing.

  Apart from a T-shirt, the boy was naked. Harry moved closer to the grainy picture. The man had one hand on his hip, the other on the back of the boy’s head. Harry could see the shadow of a profile behind the glass mosaic, but it was impossible to distinguish any features. Suddenly the cramped, stinking bathroom seemed to shrink, and the photos on the wall lurched toward him. Harry gave in to the impulse, tore them down, half in fury, half in despair, the blood pounding in his temples. He glimpsed his face in a mirror before giddily staggering out of the room with a pile of pictures under his arm. He slumped onto a chair.

  “Bloody amateur!” he muttered when he was breathing normally again.

  This was a flagrant breach of the plan. As they didn’t have a search warrant it was agreed they would
n’t leave any traces, just find out what was in the flat and then, if they discovered anything, return with a search warrant later.

  Harry looked for a place on the wall to fix his gaze and convince himself it was necessary to take concrete evidence to persuade the stubborn mule of a Police Chief. If they were quick they could get hold of a lawyer that evening and be waiting with the requisite papers when Løken returned from the dinner. While he was debating to and fro, he picked up the night-vision goggles, switched them on and looked through the window. The window looked out onto a backyard, and unconsciously he was searching for a window frame with a glass mosaic like the one in the photos, but all he could see were whitewashed walls swimming in the green shimmer of the goggles.

  Harry glanced at his watch. He realized he would need to hang the photos back up. The Police Chief would have to make do with his description. Then his blood froze.

  He had heard something. That is, he had heard a thousand things, but one sound among the thousand did not belong to the now familiar cacophony from the streets. And it came from the hall. It was a well-lubricated click. Oil and metal. When the draft told him that someone had opened the door, he thought of Sunthorn, until it struck him that the person who had just entered was trying to be as quiet as possible. Harry held his breath while his brain whirred through his sound archives at a furious pace. A sound expert in Australia had told him that the membrane in your ear can hear the difference in pressure between a million different frequencies. And this had not been the sound of a doorknob being turned but a recently oiled gun being cocked.

  Harry was at the back of the room like a living target against the white walls, and the light switch was on the opposite side, by the door. He grabbed the large scissors from the middle of the table, crouched down and followed the cable from the architect’s lamp to the socket. He pulled out the plug and rammed the scissors into the hard plastic with all his strength.

  A blue light flashed from the socket, after which there was a muffled explosion. Then it was pitch-black.

  The electric shock numbed his arm, and with the stench of burned plastic and metal in his nostrils he slid groaning along the wall.

  He listened, but all he could hear was traffic and his own heart. It was pounding so hard he could feel it; it was like sitting on a horse at full gallop. He could hear something being carefully laid on the floor and knew the person had removed his shoes. He still had the scissors in his hand. Could he see a shadow moving? It was impossible to say; it was so dark that even the white walls weren’t visible. The bedroom door creaked, a click followed. Harry realized the intruder had tried to switch on the light, but the short circuit had obviously blown all the fuses in the flat. That told him at least the person was familiar with the layout. But if it was Løken, Sunthorn would have rung. Or would he? The image of Sunthorn’s head leaning against the car window, a little hole above the ear, flickered past him.

  Harry wondered whether he should try to crawl toward the front door, but something told him that this was what the other person was waiting for. As he opened the door his silhouette would be like one of the targets at the shooting gallery in Økern. Shit! The man was probably sitting on the floor somewhere with his gun trained on the door right now.

  If only he could contact Sunthorn! At that moment he realized he still had the binoculars around his neck. He put them to his eyes, but saw only green fog, as if someone had smeared the lenses with snot. He rotated the focus as far as possible. Everything was still blurred, but he was able to discern the outline of a person standing by the wall on the other side of the table. His arm was bent and the gun was pointing to the ceiling. It was perhaps two meters from the edge of the table to the wall.

  Harry launched himself, grabbed the tabletop with both hands and held it in front of him like a battering ram. He heard a groan and the clunk of a gun hitting the floor, then he slid across the table and seized what felt like a head. He tightened his arm around the neck and squeezed.

  “Politiet!” he shouted and the man froze as Harry pressed the cold steel of the scissor blade against his warm face. For a while they stayed like that, locked around each other, two strangers in the inky darkness, both gasping for breath as if after a marathon.

  “Hole?” the other man moaned.

  Harry gathered that in his panic he had called out in Norwegian.

  “I would appreciate it if you would let me go now. I’m Ivar Løken and I won’t try anything.”

  33

  Saturday, January 18

  Løken lit a candle while Harry studied Løken’s gun, a specially built Glock 31. He had removed the magazine and put it in his pocket. The gun was heavier than any he had ever held.

  “I got the gun when I was serving in Korea,” Løken said.

  “I see. Korea. What were you doing there?”

  Løken put the matches in a drawer and sat down at the table opposite Harry.

  “Norway had a field hospital down there with the UN, and I was a young second lieutenant and thought I liked excitement. After the armistice in 1953 I continued to work for the UN, for the newly established Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees. Refugees streamed across the border from North Korea, and life was a trifle lawless. I slept with it under my pillow.” He pointed to the gun.

  “I see. What did you do after that?”

  “Bangladesh and Vietnam. Hunger, war and the Boat People. Afterward life in Norway seemed unbearably trivial, so I was unable to stick it out for more than a couple of years before I had to get out again. You know.”

  Harry didn’t know. Nor did he know what to believe about this lean individual sitting in front of him. He looked like an old Indian chief, with an aquiline nose and intense, deep-set eyes. His hair was white, his face tanned and wrinkled. In addition, he seemed totally at ease in the situation, which put Harry even more on his guard.

  “Why did you come back? And how did you get past my colleague?”

  The white-haired Norwegian flashed a lupine grin, and a gold tooth glinted in the flickering candlelight.

  “The car you came in doesn’t quite fit the neighborhood. We only have tuk-tuks, taxis and old wrecks parked here. I saw two people in the car, both sitting up a little too straight. So I walked around the corner and into the cafe where I could keep an eye on you. After a while I saw the car light come on and you get out. I reckoned one of you would keep watch and waited until your colleague returned. Then I finished my drink, flagged down a taxi, was driven to the underground car park and got the lift up. Nice little number of yours with the short circuit …”

  “And normal people don’t notice parked cars in the street. Unless they have been trained to do so or are on their guard.”

  “Well, first of all, Tonje Wiig is unlikely to win an Oscar for her dinner invitation performance.”

  “So what are you really doing here?”

  Løken reached out for the photos and equipment which were now strewn across the floor.

  “Do you live from taking pictures of … that?” Harry said.

  “Yep.”

  Harry felt his pulse race. “Do you know how many years they’ll lock you up for that in Thailand? I’ve got enough here for ten years, I reckon.”

  Løken laughed. A brief, dry laugh. “Do you think I’m stupid, Detective? You wouldn’t have needed to break in if you’d had a search warrant. If I risk being punished for what I have in this flat then what you and your colleague have just done has definitely got me off the hook. Any judge will rule as inadmissible the evidence you have acquired in this way. It’s not just irregular, it’s absolutely illegal. You might be looking at a prolonged stint inside yourself, Hole.”

  Harry struck him with the gun. It was like switching on a tap—the blood poured out of Løken’s nose.

  Løken didn’t move, just looked down at the flowery shirt and the white trousers as they were stained red.

  “That’s genuine Thai silk, you know,” he said. “Not cheap.”

  The vio
lence should have put the brakes on him, but instead Harry could feel the fury growing.

  “You can afford it, you fucking pedophile. I assume they pay you well for this shite.” Harry kicked the photos on the floor.

  “Well, I’m not sure about that,” Løken said, holding a white handkerchief to his nose. “It’s in line with the government wage scale. Plus an adjustment for living abroad.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  The gold tooth glinted again. Harry noticed he was squeezing the gun so hard his hand was beginning to ache. He was glad he’d removed the magazine.

  “There are a couple of things you don’t know, Hole. You should perhaps have been told, but your Police Commissioner probably thought it unnecessary as this has nothing to do with your murder investigation. But now I’ve been exposed you may as well know the rest. The Police Commissioner and Dagfinn Torhus from the Foreign Office told me about the photos you found in the ambassador’s briefcase and now you know of course that they’re mine.” With an outstretched palm, he continued. “Those and the pictures you can see here are links in a pedophilia investigation which, for a variety of reasons, has been labeled secret until further notice. I’ve been carrying out surveillance of this person for more than six months. The photos are evidence.”

  Harry didn’t require a moment to consider; he knew this was the truth. Everything clicked into place, as though deep down he had known all along. The secrecy around Løken’s job, the photographic equipment, the night-vision binoculars, the trips to Vietnam and Laos, everything fitted. And the man bleeding from the nose opposite him was suddenly no longer his enemy but a colleague, an ally whose nose he had made a serious attempt to smash.

  He nodded slowly and put the gun down on the table.

  “Fine, I believe you. Why so secret?”

  “Do you know about the agreement Sweden and Denmark have with Thailand to investigate sexual abuse cases here?”