by Jo Nesbo
Bjorn hurriedly put back the rope.
‘OK, boss,’ Harry said, sending Skai a closed smile. ‘Can we touch anything?’
The officer weighed Harry up. ‘You still haven’t told me what kind of case this is.’
‘It’s confidential,’ Harry said. ‘Sorry. Fraud Squad. You know.’
‘That right? If you’re the Harry Hole I think you are, you used to work on murders.’
‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘now it’s insider trading, tax evasion and fraud. One moves upwards in life.’
Officer Skai pinched an eye shut. A bird shrieked.
‘Of course, you’re right, Skai,’ Kaja said with a sigh. ‘But I’m the person who has to deal with the red tape for the search warrant from the police solicitor. As you know, we’re understaffed and it would save me a lot of time if we could just…’ She smiled with her tiny, pointed teeth and gestured towards the coil of rope.
Skai looked at her. Rocked to and fro on his rubber heels a couple of times. Then he nodded.
‘I’ll wait in the boat,’ he said.
Bjorn set to work immediately. He placed the coil on the long table, opened the little rucksack he had with him, switched on a torch attached to a cord with a fish hook on the end and secured it into position between two boards in the ceiling. He took out his laptop and a portable microscope shaped like a hammer, plugged the microscope into the USB port on the laptop, checked it was transmitting pictures to the screen and clicked on an image he had transferred to the laptop before they departed.
Harry stood beside the bride and gazed down at the lake. In the boat he could see the glow of a cigarette. He eyed the rails that went down into the water. The deep end. Harry had never liked swimming in fresh water, especially after the time he and Oystein had skipped school, gone to Lake Hauktjern in Ostmarka and jumped off the Devil’s Tip, which people said was twelve metres high. And Harry – seconds before he hit the water – had seen a viper gliding through the depths beneath him. Then he was enveloped by the freezing cold, bottle-green water and in his panic he swallowed half the lake and was sure he would never see daylight or breathe air again.
Harry smelt the fragrance that told him Kaja was standing behind him.
‘Bingo,’ he heard Bjorn Holm whisper.
Harry turned. ‘Same type of rope?’
‘No doubt about it,’ Bjorn said, holding the microscope against the rope end and pressing a key for high-resolution images. ‘Linden and elm. Same thickness and length of fibre. But the bingo is reserved for the recently sliced rope end.’
‘What?’
Bjorn Holm pointed to the screen. ‘The photo on the left is the one I brought with me. It shows the rope from Frogner Lido, magnified twenty-five times. And on this rope I have a perfect…’
Harry closed his eyes so as to relish to the full the word he knew was coming.
‘… match.’
He kept his eyes closed. The rope Marit Olsen was hung with had not only been made here, it had been cut from the rope they had before them. And it was a recent cut. Not so long ago he had been standing where they were standing. Harry sniffed the air.
An all-embracing darkness had fallen. Harry could hardly make out anything white in the window as they left.
Kaja sat at the front of the boat with him. She had to lean close so that he could hear her over the drone of the motor.
‘The person who collected the rope must have known his way around this area. And there can’t be many links in the chain between that person and the killer…’
‘I don’t think there are any links at all,’ Harry said. ‘The cut was recent. And there are not many reasons for rope to change hands.’
‘Local knowledge, lives nearby or has a cabin here,’ Kaja mused aloud. ‘Or he grew up here.’
‘But why come all the way to a disused ropery to get a few metres of rope?’ Harry asked. ‘How much does a long rope cost in a shop? A couple of hundred kroner?’
‘Perhaps he happened to be in the vicinity and knew the rope was there.’
‘OK, but in the vicinity would mean he must have been staying in one of the nearby cabins. For everyone else it’s a fair old boat trip. Are you making…?’
‘Yes, I’m making a list of the closest neighbours. By the way, I tracked down the volcano expert you asked for. A nerd up at the Geological Institute. Felix Rost. He seems to do a bit of volcano-spotting. Travelling all over the world to look at volcanoes and eruptions and that sort of thing.’
‘Did you talk to him?’
‘Just his sister, who lives with him. She asked me to email or text. He doesn’t communicate in any other way, she said. Anyway, he was out playing chess. I sent him the stones and the information.’
They advanced at a snail’s pace through the shallow channel to the pontoon. Bjorn held up the torch as a lantern to light their way through the hazy mist drifting across the water. The officer cut the motor.
‘Look!’ whispered Kaja, leaning even closer to Harry. He could smell her scent as he followed her index finger. From the rushes behind the jetty emerged a large, lone, white swan through the veil of mist into the torchlight.
‘Isn’t it just… beautiful,’ she whispered, entranced, then laughed and fleetingly squeezed his hand.
Skai accompanied them to the treatment plant. Then they got into the Volvo Amazon and were about to set off when Bjorn feverishly wound down the window and shouted to the officer: ‘FRITJOF!’
Skai stopped and turned slowly. The light from a street lamp fell onto his heavy, expressionless face.
‘The funny guy on TV,’ Bjorn shouted. ‘Fritjof from Ytre Enebakk.’
‘Fritjof?’ Skai said and spat. ‘Never heard of him.’
As the Amazon turned onto the E-road by the incinerator in Gronmo twenty-five minutes later, Harry had made a decision.
‘We must leak this information to Kripos,’ he said.
‘What?!’ Bjorn and Kaja said in unison.
‘I’ll talk to Beate, then she’ll pass the message on so that it looks like her people at Krimteknisk have discovered the business with the rope and not us.’
‘Why?’ Kaja asked.
‘If the killer lives in the Lyseren area, there’ll have to be a door-to-door search. We don’t have the means or the manpower for that.’
Bjorn Holm smacked the steering wheel.
‘I know,’ Harry said. ‘But the most important thing is that he’s caught, not who catches him.’
They drove on in silence with the false ring of the words hanging in the air.
20
Oystein
No electricity. Harry stood in the dark hall flipping the light switch on and off. Did the same in the sitting room.
Then he sat down in the wing chair staring into the black void.
After he had sat there for a while, his mobile rang.
‘Hole.’
‘Felix Rost.’
‘Mm?’ Harry said. The voice sounded as if it belonged to a slender, petite woman.
‘Frida Larsen, his sister. He asked me to ring and say that the stones you found are mafic, basalt lava. Alright?’
‘Just a minute. What does that mean? Mafic?’
‘It’s hot lava, over a thousand degrees C, low viscosity, which thins it and allows it to spread over a wide distance on eruption.’
‘Could it have come from Oslo?’
‘No.’
‘Why not? Oslo is built on lava.’
‘Old lava. This lava is recent.’
‘How recent?’
He heard her put her hand over the phone and speak. But he couldn’t hear any other voices. She must have received an answer though, because soon afterwards she was back.
‘He says anything from five to fifty years. But if you were thinking of establishing which volcano it comes from, you’ve got quite a job on your hands. There are over one and a half thousand active volcanoes in the world. And that’s just the ones we know about. If there are any other queries,
Felix can be contacted by email. Your assistant has got the address.’
‘But…’
She had already rung off.
He considered calling back, but changed his mind and punched in another number.
‘Oslotaxi.’
‘Hi, Oystein, this is Harry H.’
‘You’re kidding. Harry H is dead.’
‘Not quite.’
‘OK, then I must be dead.’
‘Feel like driving me from Sofies gate to my childhood home?’
‘No, but I’ll do it anyway. Just have to do this trip.’ Oystein’s laugh morphed into a cough. ‘Harry H! Bloody hell… Call you when I’m there.’
Harry rang off, went into the bedroom, packed a bag in the light from the street lamp outside the window and chose a couple of CDs from the sitting room in the light from his mobile. Carton of smokes, handcuffs, service pistol.
He sat in the wing chair, making use of the dark to repeat the revolver exercise. Started the stopwatch on his wrist, flicked out the cylinder of his Smith amp; Wesson, emptied and loaded. Four cartridges out, four in, without a speed-loader, just nimble fingers. Flicked the cylinder back in so that the first cartridge was first in line. Stop. Nine sixty-six. Almost three seconds over the record. He opened the cylinder. He had messed up. The first chamber ready to fire was one of the two empty ones. He was dead. He repeated the exercise. Nine fifty. And dead again. When Oystein rang, after twenty minutes, he was down to eight seconds and had died six times.
‘Coming,’ Harry said.
He walked into the kitchen. Looked at the cupboard under the sink. Hesitated. Then he took down the photos of Rakel and Oleg and put them in his inside pocket.
***
‘Hong Kong?’ sniffed Oystein Eikeland. He turned his bloated alky face with huge hooter and sad drooping moustache to Harry in the seat next to him. ‘What the hell d’you do there?’
‘You know me,’ Harry said as Oystein stopped on red outside the Radisson SAS Hotel.
‘I bloody do not,’ Oystein said, sprinkling tobacco into his roll-up. ‘How would I?’
‘Well, we grew up together. Do you remember?’
‘So? You were already a sodding enigma then, Harry.’
The rear door was torn open and a man wearing a coat got in. ‘Airport express, main station. Quick.’
‘Taxi’s taken,’ Oystein said without turning.
‘Nonsense, the sign on the roof ’s lit.’
‘Hong Kong sounds groovy. Why d’you come home actually?’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said the man on the back seat.
Oystein poked the cigarette between his lips and lit up. ‘Tresko rang to invite me to a get-together tonight.’
‘Tresko hasn’t got any friends,’ Harry said.
‘He hasn’t, has he. So I asked him, “Who are your friends then?” “You”, he said, and asked me, “And yours, Oystein?” “You,” I answered. “So it’s just us two.” We’d forgotten all about you, Harry. That’s what happens when you go to…’ He funnelled his lips and, in a staccato voice, said, ‘Hong Kong!’
‘Hey!’ came a shout from the back seat. ‘If you’ve finished, perhaps we might…’
The lights changed to green, and Oystein accelerated away.
‘Are you coming then? It’s at Tresko’s place.’
‘Stinks of toe-fart there, Oystein.’
‘He’s got a full fridge.’
‘Sorry, I’m not in a party mood.’
‘Party mood?’ Oystein snorted, smacking the wheel with his hand. ‘You don’t know what a party mood is, Harry. You always backed off parties. Do you remember? We’d bought some beers, intending to go to some fancy address in Nordstrand with loads of women. And you suggested you, me and Tresko went to the bunkers instead and drank on our own.’
‘Hey, this isn’t the way to the airport express!’ came a whine from the back seat.
Oystein braked for red again, tossed his wispy shoulder-length hair to the side and addressed the back seat. ‘And that was where we ended up. Got rat-arsed and that fella started singing “No Surrender” until Tresko chucked empty bottles at him.’
‘Honest to God!’ the man sobbed, tapping his forefinger on the glass of a TAG Heuer watch. ‘I just have to catch the last plane to Stockholm.’
‘The bunkers are great,’ Harry said. ‘Best view in Oslo.’
‘Yep,’ Oystein said. ‘If the Allies had attacked there, the Germans would’ve shot them to bits.’
‘Right,’ Harry grinned.
‘You know, we had a standing agreement, him and me and Tresko,’ Oystein said, but the suit was now desperately scanning the rain for vacant taxis. ‘If the sodding Allies come, we’ll bloody shoot the meat off their carcasses. Like this.’ Oystein pointed an imaginary machine gun at the suit and fired a salvo. The suit stared in horror at the crazy taxi driver whose chattering noises were causing small, foam-white drops of spit to land on his dark, freshly ironed suit trousers. With a little gasp he managed to open the car door and stumble out into the rain.
Oystein burst into coarse, hearty laughter.
‘You were missing home,’ Oystein said. ‘You wanted to dance with Killer Queen at Ekeberg restaurant again.’
Harry chuckled and shook his head. In the wing mirror he saw the man charging madly towards the National Theatre station. ‘It’s my father. He’s ill. He hasn’t got long left.’
‘Oh shit.’ Oystein pressed the accelerator again. ‘Good man, too.’
‘Thank you. Thought you would want to know.’
‘Course I bloody do. Have to tell my folks.’
‘So, here we are,’ Oystein said, parking outside the garage and the tiny, yellow timber house in Oppsal.
‘Yup,’ Harry said.
Oystein inhaled so hard the cigarette seemed to be catching fire, held the smoke down in his lungs and let it out again with a long, gurgling wheeze. Then he tilted his head slightly and flicked the ash into the ashtray. Harry experienced a sweet pain in his heart. How many times had he seen Oystein do exactly that, seen him lean to the side as though the cigarette were so heavy that he would lose balance. Head tilted. The ash on the ground in a smokers’ shed at school, in an empty beer bottle at a party they had gatecrashed, on cold, damp concrete in a bunker.
‘Life’s bloody unfair,’ Oystein said. ‘Your father was sober, went walking on Sundays and worked as a teacher. While my father drank, worked at the Kadok factory, where everyone got asthma and weird rashes, and didn’t move a millimetre once he was ensconced on the sofa at home. And the guy’s as fit as a fuckin’ fiddle.’
Harry remembered the Kadok factory. Kodak backwards. The owner, from Sunnmore, had read that Eastman had called his camera factory Kodak because it was a name that could be remembered and pronounced all over the world. But Kadok was forgotten and it shut down several years ago.
‘All things pass,’ Harry said.
Oystein nodded as though he had been following his train of thought.
‘Ring if you need anything, Harry.’
‘Yep.’
Harry waited until he heard the wheels crunching on the gravel behind him and the car was gone before he unlocked the door and entered. He switched on the light and stood still as the door fell to and clicked shut. The smell, the silence, the light falling on the coat cupboard, everything spoke to him, it was like sinking into a pool of memories. They embraced him, warmed him, made his throat constrict. He removed his coat and kicked off his shoes. Then he started to walk. From room to room. From year to year. From Mum and Dad to Sis, and then to himself. The boy’s room. The Clash poster, the one where the guitar is about to be smashed on the floor. He lay on his bed and breathed in the smell of the mattress. And then came the tears.
21
Snow White
It was two minutes to eight in the evening when Mikael Bellman was walking up Karl Johans gate, one of the world’s more modest parades. He was in the middle of the kingdom of Norway, at the mid-point
of the axis. To the left, the university and knowledge; to the right, the National Theatre and culture. Behind him, in the Palace Gardens, the Royal Palace situated upon high. And right in front of him: power. Three hundred paces later, at exactly eight o’clock, he mounted the stone steps to the main entrance of Stortinget. The parliament building, like most of Oslo, was not particularly big or impressive. And security was minimal. There were only two lions carved from Grorud granite standing on either side of the slope which led to the entrance.
Bellman went up to the door, which opened noiselessly before he had a chance to push. He arrived at reception and stood looking around. A security guard appeared in front of him with a friendly but firm nod towards a Gilardoni X-ray machine. Ten seconds later it had revealed that Mikael Bellman was unarmed, there was metal in his belt, but that was all.
Rasmus Olsen was waiting for him, leaning against the reception desk. Marit Olsen’s thin widower shook hands with Bellman and walked ahead as he automatically switched on his guide voice.
‘Stortinget, three hundred and eighty employees, a hundred and sixty-nine MPs. Built in 1866, designed by Emil Victor Langlet. A Swede, by the way. This is the hall known as Trappehallen. The stone mosaics are called Society, Else Hagen, 1950. The king’s portrait was painted…’
They emerged into Vandrehallen, which Mikael recognised from the TV. A couple of faces, neither familiar, flitted past. Rasmus explained to him that there had just been a committee meeting, but Bellman was not listening. He was thinking that these were the corridors of power. He was disappointed. Fine to have all the gold and red, but where was the magnificence, the stateliness, that was supposed to instil awe at the feet of those who ruled? This damned humble sobriety; it was like a weakness, of which this tiny and, not so long ago, poor democracy in Northern Europe could not rid itself. Yet he had returned. If he had not been able to reach the top where he had tried first, among the wolves of Europol, he would certainly succeed here, in competition with midgets and second-raters.
