by Jo Nesbo
‘Yes,’ Mikael said. ‘Perhaps you could brew up some coffee?’
‘Sorry?’ The bushy eyebrows were raised high up on the old man’s forehead.
‘If we’re going to be sitting here for a while, a cup would be nice?’
The man studied Mikael. ‘Yes, yes, of course. Come on, we can sit in the kitchen.’
Mikael followed him. Passed a forest of family photographs on the table and cabinet. They reminded him of the barricades on the D-Day beaches, a futile bulwark against external attacks.
The kitchen was a half-hearted nod to modernity, resembling a compromise between a daughter-in-law’s insistence on the minimum you can demand of a kitchen and the owners’ basic desire to change nothing more than a broken fridge.
While the old man took a packet of coffee from a high-up cabinet with a frosted-glass door, pulled off the elastic and measured it with a yellow spoon, Mikael Bellman sat down, put his recording device on the table and pressed play. Truls’s voice sounded metallic and thin: ‘Even though we have reason to suspect that the woman is a prostitute, your son may have lent his car to someone else. We don’t have a photo of the driver.’
The ex-Chief of Police’s voice sounded more distant, but there was no background noise, so the words were easy to hear: ‘So you don’t even have any proof. No, you’d better just forget this one.’
Mikael saw the coffee spill from the spoon as the old man recoiled and froze, as though someone had thrust a gun barrel in his back.
Truls’s voice: ‘Thank you. We’ll do as you say.’
‘Berentzen at Orgkrim, did you say?’
‘Correct.’
‘Thank you, Berentzen. You officers are doing a good job.’
Mikael pressed stop.
The ex-Chief turned slowly. His face was pale. Ashen, Mikael Bellman thought. An appropriate colour for someone declared dead. The man’s mouth twitched a few times.
‘What you’re trying to say,’ Mikael Bellman said, ‘is “What’s this?” And the answer is this is the ex-Chief of Police putting pressure on a public servant to prevent his son being subjected to the same investigation and legal action as any other citizen of this country.’
The old man’s voice sounded like a desert wind. ‘He wasn’t even there. I spoke to Sondre. His car has been in the garage since January because of a fire in the engine. He can’t have been there.’
‘Does that sting a little?’ Mikael said. ‘You didn’t even need to save your son, and now the press and the council are going to hear how you tried to corrupt a policeman.’
‘There is no photo of the car and this prostitute, is there?’
‘Not now, anyway. You ordered it to be shredded. And who knows, perhaps it was taken before January?’ Mikael smiled. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help himself.
The colour returned to the man’s cheeks along with the bass tone in his voice. ‘You don’t surely imagine you’re going to get away with this, do you, Bellman?’
‘I don’t know. I only know that the council won’t want to have a demonstrably corrupt man as their Chief of Police.’
‘What do you want, Bellman?’
‘You’d be better off asking yourself what you want. To live a life of peace and quiet with a reputation as a good, honest policeman? Yes? Then you’ll see we’re not very different, because that’s exactly what I want. I want to perform my job as Chief of Police in peace and quiet, I want to solve the police murders without the bloody Councillor for Social Affairs interfering, and afterwards I want to enjoy a reputation as a good policeman. So how do we both achieve this?’
Bellman waited until he was sure the old man had collected himself sufficiently to be able to follow all the details.
‘I want you to tell the council that you’ve immersed yourself in the case and you’re so impressed by the professional manner in which it’s being handled that you can’t see any point in stepping in and taking over. Quite the contrary, you think it would reduce the chances of a swift resolution. Also you have to question the Social Affairs Councillor’s assessment of this case. She should know that police work has to be methodical and avoid the pitfalls of short-term thinking, and it appears she has reacted in a knee-jerk fashion. We have all been under pressure as a result of this case, but it is a requirement of all political and professional leaders that they don’t lose their heads in situations where they most need them. You therefore insist that the incumbent Chief of Police continue his work without any interference, as that strategy, from your perspective, has the greatest chance of success and accordingly you withdraw your candidacy.’
Bellman took an envelope from his inside pocket and pushed it across the table.
‘That in brief is what is written in this personal letter to the chair of the City Council. All you have to do is sign it and send it. As you can see, it even has a stamp. By the way, you can have this recording for keeps when I’ve received a satisfactory response from the council regarding their decision.’ Bellman nodded to the kettle. ‘How’s it doing? Any chance of that coffee?’
Harry took a swig of coffee and surveyed his town.
The Police HQ canteen was on the top floor and had a view of Ekeberg, the fjord and the new part of town that was emerging in Bjørvika. First, though, he looked for the old landmarks. How often had he sat here in his lunch break trying to see cases from other angles, with other eyes, with new and different perspectives, while the urge for a cigarette and alcohol tore at him and he told himself he wasn’t allowed to go onto the terrace for a cigarette until he had at least one new testable hypothesis?
He had yearned for that, he thought.
A hypothesis. One which wasn’t just a figment of the imagination but anchored in something that could be tested, responded to.
He raised his coffee cup. Put it down again. No more swigs until his brain had found something. A motive. They had been banging their heads against the wall for so long that perhaps it was time to start somewhere else. Somewhere where there was light.
A chair scraped. Harry looked up. Bjørn Holm. He put his coffee down on the table without spilling it, removed his Rasta hat and rumpled his red hair. Harry watched him absent-mindedly. Did he do this to air his scalp? Or to avoid the familiar hair-plastered-to-scalp look his generation feared, but which Oleg appeared to like? Fringe stuck to a sweaty forehead above a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. The well-read nerd, the webwanker, the self-conscious urbanite who embraced the loser image, the fake outsider role. Was that what he looked like, the man they were after? Or was he a red-cheeked country boy in the big city with light blue jeans, practical shoes, a haircut from the most convenient hairdresser’s, the type who cleaned the stairs when it was his turn, was polite and helpful and no one had a bad word to say about him? Non-testable hypotheses. No swig of coffee.
‘Well?’ Bjørn said, treating himself to a huge swig.
‘Well . . .’ Harry said. He had never asked Bjørn why a country boy would walk around wearing a reggae hat and not a Stetson. ‘I think we should take a closer look at René Kalsnes. And forget the motive, just look at the forensic facts. We have the bullet that he was killed with. Nine mil. The world’s most common calibre. Who would use it?’
‘Everyone. Absolutely everyone. Even we would.’
‘Mm. Did you know that in peacetime policemen are responsible for four per cent of all murders worldwide? In the Third World the figure is nine per cent. And that makes us the world’s most lethal occupational group.’
‘Wow,’ Bjørn said.
‘He’s kidding,’ Katrine said. She pulled up a chair and placed a large cup of steaming tea on the table in front of her. ‘When people use statistics, in seventy-two per cent of cases, they’ve made them up on the spur of the moment.’
Harry laughed.
‘Is that funny?’ Bjørn asked.
‘It’s a joke,’ Harry said.
‘How?’ Bjørn said.
‘Ask her.’
Bjørn looked at Katr
ine. She smiled as she stirred her tea.
‘I don’t get it!’ Bjørn said, glaring at Harry.
‘It proves the point. She made the seventy-two per cent up herself, didn’t she?’
Bjørn shook his head, bemused.
‘Like a paradox,’ Harry said. ‘Like the Greek who says all Greeks lie.’
‘But it doesn’t mean it isn’t true,’ Katrine said. ‘The seventy-two per cent, that is. So you think the murderer is a policeman, do you, Harry?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Harry smiled, folding his hands behind his head. ‘I just said—’
He stopped. Felt his hair standing on end. The good old hairs on the back of the neck. The hypothesis. He gazed down into his cup. He really felt like a swig now.
‘Police,’ he repeated, looked up and saw the other two staring at him. ‘René Kalsnes was killed by a policeman.’
‘What?’ Katrine said.
‘There’s our hypothesis. The bullet was a nine mil, used in Heckler & Koch service pistols. A police baton was found not far from the crime scene. It’s also the only one of the original murders that has a common link with each of the police murders. Their faces were smashed in. Most of the original murders were sexually motivated, but this is a hate crime. Why do people hate?’
‘Now you’re back to motive, Harry,’ Bjørn protested.
‘Quickly, why?’
‘Jealousy,’ Katrine said. ‘Revenge for being humiliated, rejected, jilted, ridiculed, having your wife, child, brother, sister, future prospects, pride taken from you—’
‘Stop right there,’ Harry said. ‘Our hypothesis is that the murderer has some connection with the police. And with that as the basis we have to dig up the Kalsnes case again and find out who killed him.’
‘Fine,’ Katrine said. ‘But even if there are a couple of clues in it, it’s still unclear to me why it’s suddenly so obvious we’re looking for a policeman.’
‘If no one can give me a better hypothesis, five, four . . .’ Harry sent both of them a questioning stare.
Bjørn groaned. ‘Let’s not go there, Harry.’
‘What?’
‘If the rest of the force hears we’re conducting an investigation into our own—’
‘We’ll have to put up with it,’ Harry said. ‘Right now we’re at rock bottom and we have to start somewhere. At worst we solve a cold case. At best we find—’
Katrine finished the sentence for him: ‘—the person who killed Beate.’
Bjørn chewed his lower lip. Then he shrugged and nodded to say he was in.
‘Good,’ Harry said. ‘Katrine, you check the registers of guns that have been reported missing or stolen and check if René had contact with anyone in the police. Bjørn, you go through the forensic evidence in the light of our hypothesis, see if it turns up anything new.’
Bjørn and Katrine got to their feet.
Harry watched them walk through the canteen to the door, saw a table of officers working for the larger investigative unit and the looks they exchanged. Someone said something and they burst out laughing.
Harry closed his eyes and listened to his senses. Searching. What could it be, what was it that had happened? He asked himself the same question Katrine had asked: why was it so obvious that it was a policeman they were after? Because there was something. He concentrated, blocked everything out, knowing it was like a dream, he had to hurry before it went. Slowly he sank inside himself, sank like a deep-sea diver without a torch, groping in the darkness of his subconscious. Caught something, could feel it. Something to do with Katrine’s meta-joke. Meta. Commenting on itself. Proving a point. Was the murderer proving a point? It slipped through his fingers, and at that moment he was lifted up by his own buoyancy, back to the light. He opened his eyes and sound returned. The clatter of plates, chatting, laughing. Shit, shit, shit. He had almost had it, but now it was too late. He only knew the joke was telling him something, had a catalytic effect on something deep inside him. Which he wasn’t able to grasp now, but which he just hoped would float to the surface of its own accord. Nevertheless, the reaction had given them something, a direction, a starting point. A testable hypothesis. Harry took a deep swig of coffee, got up and walked towards the terrace to have a cigarette.
Bjørn Holm was handed two plastic boxes across the Evidence Room counter and signed the enclosed inventory.
He took the boxes with him to Krimteknisk in Bryn, and started on the box from the original murder.
The first thing that made him wonder was the bullet found in René’s head. It was fairly misshapen after passing through flesh, cartilage and bone, which after all are fairly soft materials. The second was that the bullet hadn’t gone green after years in this box. Age didn’t leave particularly noticeable marks on lead, but he thought this bullet looked conspicuously new.
He flicked through the crime-scene photos of the dead man. Stopped at a close-up showing the side of his face with the entry wound, where a broken cheekbone protruded. There was a black stain on the shiny white bone. He took out his magnifying glass. It looked like a cavity, like you get in a tooth, but you don’t get black holes in cheekbones. An oil stain from the smashed car? A bit of rotten leaf or caked mud from the river? He took out the autopsy report.
Searched until he found it.
A small amount of black paint stuck to the maxillaris. Origin unknown.
Paint on the cheek. Pathologists usually wrote no more than they could account for, preferably a little less.
Bjørn flicked through the photos until he found the car. Red. So not car varnish.
Bjørn shouted from where he was sitting. ‘Kim Erik!’
Six seconds later a head appeared in the doorway. ‘Did you call?’
‘Yes. You were in the forensics team for the Mittet murder in Drammen, weren’t you? Did you find any black paint?’
‘Paint?’
‘Something that might come off a blunt instrument if you hit out like this . . .’ Bjørn demonstrated by beating his fist up and down as if playing rock-paper-scissors. ‘The skin tears, the cheekbone cracks and sticks out, but you keep hitting the jagged end of the bone with the blunt instrument, removing paint from whatever it is you’re holding.’
‘No.’
‘OK. Thank you.’
Bjørn Holm took the lid off the second box, the one with the Mittet case material, but noticed the young forensics officer was still standing in the doorway.
‘Yes?’ Bjørn said without looking up.
‘It was navy blue.’
‘What was?’
‘The paint. And it wasn’t the cheekbone. It was the jawbone, the fracture. We analysed it. It’s pretty standard paint, used on iron tools. Sticks well and prevents rust.’
‘Any suggestions for what kind of tool it might have been?’
Bjørn could see Kim Erik veritably swelling in the doorway. He had personally trained him, and now the master was asking the apprentice if he had ‘any suggestions’.
‘Impossible to say. It can be used on anything.’
‘OK, that’s all.’
‘But I’ve got a suggestion.’
Bjørn could see his colleague was bursting to tell him. He was going to go a long way.
‘Out with it.’
‘Carjack. All cars are supplied with a jack, but there wasn’t a jack in the boot.’
Bjørn nodded. Hardly had the heart to say it. ‘The car was a VW Sharan, 2010 model, Kim Erik. If you check it out you’ll find it’s one of the few cars that doesn’t come with a jack.’
‘Oh.’ The young man’s face crumpled like a punctured beach ball.
‘Thanks for your help, though, Kim Erik.’
He would go a long way all right. But in a few years of course.
Bjørn systematically went through the Mittet box.
There was another thing that set his mind whirring.
He put the lid back on and walked to the office at the end of the corridor. Knocked at the open door. Bli
nked first, a little confused, at the polished head, before realising who it was sitting there: Roar Midtstuen, the oldest and most experienced forensics officer of them all. Once upon a time Midtstuen had struggled with the idea of working for a boss who was not only younger but also a woman. But the situation had eased as he’d seen that Beate Lønn was one of the best things that had ever happened to their department.
He had just returned to work after being off sick for some months, ever since his daughter had been killed in a collision. She was returning from top-rope climbing a mountain face to the east of Oslo. Her bike had been found in a ditch. The driver still hadn’t been found.
‘How do, Midtstuen.’
‘How do, Holm.’ Midtstuen spun round in the swivel chair, shrugged, smiled and tried to exude energy, but it wasn’t there. Bjørn had barely recognised the bloated face when he’d reappeared for work. Apparently it was a normal side effect of antidepressants.
‘Have police batons always been black?’
As forensics officers, they were used to somewhat bizarre questions about detail, so Midtstuen didn’t even raise an eyebrow.
‘They’ve definitely been dark.’ Midtstuen had grown up in Østre Toten, like Holm, but it was only when the two of them spoke that their childhood dialect resurfaced. ‘But there was a period in the nineties when they were blue, I seem to remember. Bloody irritating that is.’
‘What is?’
‘That we’re always changing the colour, that we can’t stick to one. First of all, patrol cars are black and white, then they’re white with red-and-blue stripes, and now they’re going to be white with black-and-yellow stripes. This fiddling about just weakens the brand. Like the Drammen cordon tape.’
‘What cordon tape?’
‘Kim Erik was at the Mittet crime scene and found bits of police tape and thought it had to be from the old murder. He . . . we were both on the case of course, but I always forget the name of that homo . . .’
‘René Kalsnes.’
‘But young folk like Kim Erik don’t remember that police tape at that time was light blue and white,’ Midtstuen hastened to add as though afraid he’d put his foot in it: ‘But Kim Erik is going to be good.’
