Police: A Harry Hole thriller (Oslo Sequence 8)

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘I reckon so, too.’

  ‘Good.’ Midtstuen’s jaw muscles churned as he chewed. ‘Then we agree.’

  Bjørn rang Katrine as soon as he was back in his office, asked her to drop by the police station, on the first floor, scrape a bit of paint off one of their batons and send it to Bryn with a message.

  Afterwards he sat thinking that he had automatically gone to the office at the end of the corridor, where he had always gone for advice. He had been so absorbed in his work that he had simply forgotten she wasn’t there any longer. That the office had been taken over by Roar Midtstuen. And for a brief instant he thought he could understand Midtstuen, how the loss of another person could suck the marrow out of you and make it impossible to get anything done, make it meaningless even to get out of bed. He dismissed the thought. Dismissed the sight of Midtstuen’s round, bloated face. Because they had something here, he could feel it.

  Harry, Katrine and Bjørn sat on the roof of the Opera House looking across to the islands of Hovedøya and Gresholmen.

  It had been Harry’s suggestion. He thought they needed fresh air. It was a warm, cloudy evening, the tourists had decamped ages ago, and they had the whole of the marble roof to themselves, even where it sloped down into Oslo Fjord, which glittered with lights from Ekeberg Ridge, Havnelageret and the Denmark ferry docked at Vippetangen.

  ‘I’ve gone through all the police murders again,’ Bjørn said. ‘And tiny bits of paint were found on Vennesla and Nilsen as well as on Mittet. It’s standard paint used everywhere, also on police batons.’

  ‘Well done, Bjørn,’ Harry said.

  ‘And then there were the remains of the cordon tape they found at the Mittet crime scene. It couldn’t have been from the investigation of the Kalsnes murder. They didn’t use that kind of tape then.’

  ‘It was tape from the day before,’ Harry said. ‘The murderer rang Mittet, told him to come to what Mittet thinks is a police murder committed at the old crime scene. So when Mittet gets there and sees the police tape he doesn’t smell a rat. Perhaps the murderer is even wearing his uniform.’

  ‘Shit,’ Katrine said. ‘I’ve spent the whole day cross-checking Kalsnes with police employees and didn’t find a thing. But I can see we’re on to something here.’

  Excited, she looked at Harry, who was lighting a cigarette.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ Bjørn asked.

  ‘Now,’ Harry said, ‘we call in service pistols to see if they match our bullet.’

  ‘Which ones?’

  ‘All of them.’

  They eyed Harry in silence.

  ‘What do you mean by “all”?’ Katrine asked.

  ‘All the service pistols in the police force. First in Oslo, then in Østland and, if necessary, in the whole country.’

  Another silence as a gull screamed shrilly in the darkness above them.

  ‘You’re kidding?’ Bjørn tested.

  The cigarette bobbed up and down between Harry’s lips as he answered. ‘Nope.’

  ‘It ain’t feasible. Forget it,’ Bjørn said. ‘People think it takes five minutes to run a ballistics test because it looks like that on CSI. Even officers think that. The fact is that to check one gun is almost a day’s work. All of them? In Oslo alone that’s . . . how many officers are there?’

  ‘One thousand eight hundred and seventy-two,’ Katrine said.

  They gawped at her.

  She shrugged. ‘Read it in the annual report for Oslo Police District.’

  They were still gawping at her.

  ‘The TV doesn’t work, and I couldn’t sleep, OK?’

  ‘Anyway,’ Bjørn said, ‘we haven’t got the resources. It can’t be done.’

  ‘The crucial thing is what you said just now about even officers thinking it takes five minutes,’ Harry said, blowing cigarette smoke into the night sky.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It’s important they think an operation like this can be done. What happens when the murderer finds out his gun has to be checked?’

  ‘You crafty devil,’ Katrine said.

  ‘Eh?’ Bjørn said.

  ‘He’ll report his gun missing or stolen as quick as a flash,’ Katrine said.

  ‘And that’s where we start looking,’ Harry said. ‘But maybe he’s one step ahead, so we’ll start by making a list of all the service pistols that have been reported missing since the murder of Kalsnes.’

  ‘One problem,’ Katrine said.

  ‘Yup,’ Harry answered. ‘Will the Chief of Police agree to put out an order which in practice points a finger of suspicion at all his officers? He’ll imagine the papers having a field day.’ Harry drew a rectangle in the air with his thumb and forefinger: “POLICE CHIEF SUSPECTS OWN OFFICERS”. “POLICE TOP BRASS LOSING IT”.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound very likely,’ Katrine said.

  ‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘say what you like about Bellman, but he’s not stupid and he knows which side his bread is buttered. If we can make a case for the murderer being a policeman and sooner or later we catch him, whether Bellman’s with us or not, he knows it will look really bad if the Chief of Police is seen to have delayed the whole investigation out of sheer cowardice. So what we have to explain to him is that investigating his own officers shows the world that the police will leave no stone unturned in their efforts, whatever corruption it reveals. It shows courage, leadership, mental agility, all good things.’

  ‘And you reckon you can persuade him with that?’ Katrine snorted. ‘If my memory serves me correctly, Harry Hole is pretty high up his hate list.’

  Harry shook his head. ‘I’ve put Gunnar Hagen on the case.’

  ‘And when will it happen?’ Bjørn asked.

  ‘It’s happening as we speak,’ Harry said, looking at the cigarette. It was almost down to the filter already. He felt an urge to throw it away, watch the sparks arcing into the darkness as it bounced down the shimmering marble slope. Until it landed in the black water and was immediately extinguished. What was stopping him? The thought that he was polluting the town or witnesses’ disapproval of his polluting the town? The act itself or the punishment? The Russian he had killed in Come As You Are was a simple matter; it had been self-defence: the Russian or him. But the so-called unsolved murder of Gusto Hanssen, that had been a choice. And yet, among all the ghosts that regularly haunted him, he had never seen the young man with the girlish good looks and the vampire teeth. An unsolved case, bollocks.

  Harry flicked the cigarette. Glowing tobacco swept into the darkness and was gone.

  37

  THE MORNING LIGHT filtered through the blinds over the surprisingly small windows in Oslo City Hall where the chairman coughed the cough that meant the meeting had started.

  Around the table sat the nine councillors each with their own responsibility, as well as the ex-Chief of Police, who had been summoned to give a brief account of how he would tackle the case of the murdered police officers or ‘the cop killer’ case as the press was consistently referring to it. The formalities were dealt with in seconds, with brief minutes and nods of agreement, which the secretary acknowledged and noted.

  The chairman then moved on to the business of the day.

  The former Chief of Police looked up, caught an enthusiastic, encouraging nod from Isabelle Skøyen and began.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Chairman. I won’t take up much of the council’s time today.’

  He glanced over at Skøyen, who appeared to be less enthusiastic about this unpromising opening.

  ‘I’ve gone through the case as requested. I have examined the police’s ongoing work and their progress, the leadership, the strategies that have been applied and their execution. Or to use Councillor Skøyen’s words, the strategies that may have been applied, but have definitely not been executed.’

  Isabelle Skøyen’s laughter was rich and self-indulgent, but somewhat curtailed, perhaps because she discovered she was the only person laughing.

  ‘I have employed all my skills accum
ulated over many years as a police officer and reached an unambiguous conclusion about what has to be done.’

  He saw Skøyen nod – the glint in her eye reminded him of an animal, though which, he couldn’t say.

  ‘Now the solving of a single crime doesn’t necessarily mean that the police are well managed. Just as an unsolved crime is not necessarily down to poor management. And having seen what the present incumbents, and Mikael Bellman in particular, have done I can’t see what I would have done differently. Or to make the point even clearer, I don’t think I could have done it as well.’

  He noted that Skøyen’s jaw had dropped, and, feeling to his surprise a certain sadistic pleasure, he continued.

  ‘The craft of criminal investigation is evolving, as is everything else in society, and from what I can see, Bellman and his staff are cognisant with and adept at utilising new methods and technological advances in a way which I and my peers would probably not have managed. He enjoys the full confidence of his officers, he is an excellent motivator and he has organised his work in a manner which colleagues in other Scandinavian countries say is exemplary. I don’t know if Councillor Skøyen is aware, but Mikael Bellman has just been asked to give a lecture at the Interpol conference in Lyons about criminal investigation and management with reference to this particular case. Skøyen suggested that Bellman was not up to the job, and it does have to be said that he is young to be a Chief of Police. But he is not only a man for the future. He is a man for the present. He is, in sum, exactly the man you need in this situation, Mr Chairman. Which makes me surplus to requirements. This is my unequivocal conclusion.’

  The former Chief of Police straightened his back, shuffled the two sheets of notes he had been holding and did up the top button of his jacket, a carefully selected capacious tweed jacket favoured by pensioners. Pushed back his chair with a scrape, as though he needed space to be able to stand up. Saw that Skøyen’s jaw had reached the nadir of its descent and that she was staring at him in disbelief.

  He waited until he heard the chairman draw breath to say something so that he could proceed to the final act. The finale. The coup de grâce.

  ‘And if I may add, since this is also about the council’s competence and management of serious cases such as the police murders, Mr Chairman . . .’

  The chair’s bushy eyebrows, which usually arched high above smiling eyes, were now low and protruded like greyish-white awnings over an angry glare. The ex-Chief waited for the chairman to nod.

  ‘. . . I appreciate that on this matter the council has been subject to immense personal pressure – after all it is their area of responsibility, and the case has attracted huge media coverage. But when a city council cedes to pressure and acts in panic by attempting to cut off the head of its Chief of Police, the question is perhaps more: is the council up to its job? We, of course, understand that this may be an excessively demanding issue for a newly elected city council. It’s unfortunate that a situation requiring experience and routine procedure should come so early in the council’s period of office.’

  He saw the chairman recoil as he recognised the phrasing.

  ‘It would have been better if this had landed on the desk of the previous City Council, given its long years of experience and its many achievements.’

  He could see from Skøyen’s suddenly pale face that she too recognised her own words about Bellman at the previous meeting. And he had to confess that it was indeed a long time since he’d had such fun.

  ‘I’m sure,’ he concluded, ‘that is what everyone in this room would have wished for, including the current council.’

  ‘Thank you for being so clear and candid,’ the chairman said. ‘I assume this means you do not have any alternative plan of action.’

  The old man nodded. ‘I don’t. But there’s a man outside whom I have taken the liberty of summoning in my place. He’ll give you what you’ve asked for.’

  He stood up, gave a brief nod and walked towards the door. He thought he could feel Isabelle Skøyen’s glare burning holes in his tweed jacket somewhere between his shoulder blades. But it didn’t matter; he had no plans she could thwart. And he knew that tonight what he would revel in most, over a glass of wine, would be the two small words he had woven into the text. They contained all the subtext the council needed. One was ‘attempting’, as in ‘attempting to cut off the head of its Chief of Police’. The other was ‘current’, as in ‘the current council’.

  Mikael Bellman got up from his chair as the door opened.

  ‘Your turn,’ said the man in the tweed jacket, proceeding past him to the lift without gracing him with a glance.

  Bellman assumed he must have been mistaken when he thought he detected a tiny smile on the man’s lips.

  Then he swallowed, took a deep breath and entered the same room where not so long ago he had been butchered into little pieces.

  The long table was encircled by nine faces. Eight of them oddly expectant, a bit like an audience at the start of the second act after a successful first. One was oddly pale. So pale that for a moment he hardly recognised her. The butcher.

  Fourteen minutes later he had finished. He had presented the plan to them. Had explained that the police’s patience had paid dividends, their systematic work had led to a breakthrough in the investigation. The breakthrough was both pleasing and painful because there was a chance that the guilty party might be someone from their own ranks. But they couldn’t turn their backs on that. They had to show the public they were willing to look under every stone, whatever they might find there. Show that they were not cowards. He was prepared for a storm, but in such situations it was all about showing courage, genuine leadership and mental agility. Not just at Police HQ, but also at City Hall. He was ready to stand proudly at the helm, but he needed the council’s confidence to take up arms.

  He had noticed that his language had become a little pompous at the end, more pompous than it had seemed when Gunnar Hagen had used it in his living room at home last night. But he knew that he definitely had a few of them on board, a couple of the women had even coloured up, especially when he hammered home the final point. Which was that when all the service pistols in the whole country were checked against this bullet, like a prince with a shoe searching for his Cinderella, he would be the first to hand in his gun for ballistic examination.

  However, what counted now was not his way with women but what the chairman thought. And he was rather more poker-faced.

  Truls Berntsen put the phone in his pocket and nodded to the Thai woman to bring him another cup of coffee.

  She smiled and was gone.

  Obliging, these Thais. Unlike the few Norwegians left serving at tables. They were lazy and moody and looked aggrieved at having to do an honest day’s work. Not like the Thai family running this little restaurant in Torshov, who jumped into action if he so much as raised an eyebrow. And when he paid for a lousy spring roll or a coffee, they beamed from ear to ear and bowed holding their palms together as though he were the great white God who had descended from the skies. He had vaguely considered going to Thailand. But it wouldn’t happen. He wanted to work again.

  Mikael had just rung and told him their ploy had worked. His suspension would soon be lifted. He hadn’t wanted to specify exactly what he meant by soon, he had just repeated it, ‘soon’.

  The coffee came, and Truls took a sip. It wasn’t particularly good, but he had reached the conclusion that he didn’t really like what other people called good coffee. This was how it should taste, percolated in a well-used percolator. The coffee should have a hint of paper filters, plastic and ancient toasted coffee-bean grease. But probably that was why he was the only customer here. People drank their coffee elsewhere and came here later in the day to have a cheap meal or to buy a takeaway.

  The Thai woman went to sit at the corner table where the rest of her family looked over what he presumed was the bill. He listened to the buzz of their strange language. Didn’t understand a word, but he li
ked it. Liked sitting near them. Nodding back graciously when they sent him a smile. Feeling he was part of this community. Was that why he came here? Truls rejected the idea. Concentrated on the problem in hand again.

  The rest of what Mikael had said.

  They had to hand in their service pistols.

  He had said they were going to be checked in connection with the police murders, and he himself – to show the summons applied to everyone, high and low – had handed in his gun for ballistic examin-ation this morning. Truls would have to do the same as quickly as possible, he said, even though he was suspended.

  It had to be the bullet in René Kalsnes. They had worked out it had to be from a police gun.

  He wasn’t too worried himself. Not only had he swapped the bullet, he had also reported the gun he had used missing, stolen. Of course he had waited for a while – a whole year in fact – to be sure no one would link the weapon with Kalsnes’s murder. Then he had wrenched open the door to his flat with a crowbar to make it look convincing and reported a burglary. He had listed loads of things that had been taken and got forty thousand off the insurance company. Plus a new service pistol.

  It wasn’t that that was the problem.

  The problem was the bullet in the evidence box. It had – how did it go? – it had seemed like a good idea at the time. But now all of a sudden he needed Mikael Bellman. If he was suspended, he wouldn’t be able to lift Truls’s suspension. Anyway, too late to do anything about that now.

  Suspended.

  Truls grinned at the notion and raised his coffee cup to toast himself in the reflection from the sunglasses he had put on the table in front of him. Then realised he must have laughed out loud, because the Thais were sending him strange looks.

  ‘I don’t know if I can pick you up from the airport,’ Harry said, walking past the place where there should have been a park, but the council in a collective aberration had erected a prison-like sports stadium for an international event being arranged for this year, but otherwise not too much happened.