by Jo Nesbo
Harry ducked beneath the low door frame and just managed to bend his knees in time; the floor inside was twenty centimetres lower.
There was a smell of incense. As well as something else, familiar – the sweet stench of an old man who had been drinking for several days.
Harry’s eyes became used to the dark, and he discovered that the small, frail old man was wearing an elegant, burgundy silk dressing gown.
‘Scandinavian accent,’ said Van Boorst in Hercule Poirot English and placed a cigarette in a yellowing holder between his thin lips. ‘Let me guess. Definitely not Danish. Could be Swedish. But I think Norwegian. Yes?’
A cockroach showed its antennae through a crack in the wall behind him.
‘Mm. An expert on accents?’
‘A mere pastime,’ said Van Boorst, flattered, pleased. ‘For small nations like Belgium you have to learn to look outwards, not inwards. And how is Herman?’
‘Fine,’ Harry said, turning to his right and seeing two pairs of bored eyes looking at him. One from a photo above the bed in the corner. A framed portrait of a person with a long grey beard, powerful nose, short hair, epaulettes, chain and sword. King Leopold, unless Harry was much mistaken. The other pair of eyes belonged to the woman lying on her side in the bed with only a blanket draped over her hips. The light from the window above her fell on her small, supple young girl’s breasts. She responded to Harry’s nod with a fleeting smile that revealed a large gold tooth among all the white ones. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. On the wall behind the slim waist Harry glimpsed a bolt hammered into the cracked plaster. From the bolt dangled a pair of pink handcuffs.
‘My wife,’ said the little Belgian. ‘Well, one of them.’
‘Mistress Van Boorst?’
‘Something of that kind. You want to buy? You have money?’
‘First I want to see what you’ve got,’ Harry said.
Eddie Van Boorst went to the door, opened it a crack and peered outside. Shut it and locked up. ‘Only got your driver with you?’
‘Yes.’
Van Boorst puffed on his cigarette while studying Harry through the folds of skin that gathered when he squinted.
Then he went to a corner of the room, kicked away the carpet, bent down and pulled at an iron ring. A trapdoor opened. The Belgian waved Harry down into the cellar first. Harry assumed it was a precaution based on experience, and did as he was told. A ladder led into pitch darkness. Harry reached solid ground after only the seventh rung. Then a light was switched on.
Harry looked around the room; the ceiling was full height and there was a level cement floor. Shelves and cupboards covered three of the walls. On the shelves were the day-to-day products: well-used Glock pistols, his Smith amp; Wesson. 38, boxes of ammunition, a Kalashnikov. Harry had never held the famous Russian automatic rifle known officially as the AK-47. He stroked the wooden stock.
‘An original from the first year of production, 1947,’ Van Boorst said.
‘Seems like everyone down here has got one,’ Harry said. ‘The most popular cause of death in Africa, I’ve heard.’
Van Boorst nodded. ‘For two simple reasons. Firstly when the Communist countries started exporting the Kalashnikov here after the Cold War, the gun cost as much as a fat chicken in peacetime. And no more than a hundred dollars in wartime. Secondly, it works, no matter what you do with it, and that’s important in Africa. In Mozambique they like their Kalashnikovs so much it’s on their national flag.’
Harry’s eyes stopped at the letters discreetly stamped on a black case.
‘Is that what I think it is?’ Harry asked.
‘Marklin,’ said Van Boorst. ‘A rare rifle. It was manufactured in very limited numbers as it was a fiasco. Much too heavy and large a calibre. Used to hunt elephants.’
‘And humans,’ Harry said softly.
‘Do you know the weapon?’
‘World’s best telescopic sights. Not exactly something you need to hit an elephant at a hundred metres. Perfect for an assassination.’ Harry ran his fingers along the case as the memories streamed back. ‘Yes, I know it.’
‘You can have it cheap. Thirty thousand euros.’
‘I’m not after a rifle this time.’ Harry turned to the shelving unit in the middle of the room. Grotesque white wooden masks grimaced at him from the shelves.
‘The Mai Mai tribe’s spiritual masks,’ said Van Boorst. ‘They think that if they dip themselves in holy water, the enemy’s bullets cannot hurt them. Because the bullets will also turn to H2O. The Mai Mai guerrillas went to war against the government army with bows and arrows, shower hats on their heads and bath plugs as amulets. I am not kidding you, monsieur. Naturally, they were mown down. But they like water, the Mai Mai do. And white masks. And their enemies’ hearts and kidneys. Lightly grilled with mashed corn.’
‘Mm,’ Harry said. ‘I hadn’t expected that such a basic house would have such a full cellar.’
Van Boorst chuckled. ‘Cellar? This is the ground floor. Or was. Before the eruption three years ago.’
Everything fell into place for Harry. Black boulders, black icing. The floor upstairs that was lower than the street.
‘Lava,’ Harry said.
Van Boorst nodded. ‘It flowed straight through the centre and took my house by Lake Kivu. All the wooden houses around here burned to the ground; this brick house was the only one left standing, but was half buried in lava.’ He pointed to the wall. ‘There you can see the front door to what was street level three years ago. I bought the house and just put in a new door where you entered.’
Harry nodded. ‘Lucky the lava didn’t burn down the door and fill this floor too.’
‘As you can see, the windows and doors are in the wall facing away from Nyiragongo. It’s not the first time. The bloody volcano spews lava on this town every ten or twenty years.’
Harry cocked an eyebrow. ‘And still people move back?’
Van Boorst shrugged. ‘Welcome to Africa. But the volcano is bloody useful. If you want to get rid of a troublesome corpse – which is a fairly normal problem in Goma – you can of course sink it in Lake Kivu. But it is still down there. Whereas if you use Nyiragongo… People often think that volcanoes have these red-hot, bubbling lava lakes at the bottom, but they do not. None of them. Apart from Nyiragongo. A thousand degrees centigrade. Drop something down there and, pouf, it is gone. It returns as a gas. It is the only chance anyone in Goma has to reach heaven.’ He broke into a hacking laugh. ‘I witnessed an overenthusiastic coltan-hunter drop a tribal chief ’s daughter on a chain into the crater up there once. The chief wouldn’t sign the papers giving the hunters the right to mine on their territory. Her hair caught fire at twenty metres above the lava. At ten metres above, the girl was burning like a candle. And five metres further down she was dripping. I am not exaggerating. Skin, flesh, it flowed off her bones… Is this what you were interested in?’ Van Boorst had opened a cupboard and taken out a metal ball. It was shiny, perforated with tiny apertures and smaller than a tennis ball. From a slightly larger opening there hung a wire loop. It was the same instrument Harry had seen at Herman Kluit’s house.
‘Does it work?’ Harry asked.
Van Boorst sighed. He stuck his little finger in the loop and pulled. There was a loud bang and the ball jumped in the Belgian’s hand. Harry stared. From the holes in the ball were protruding what looked like antennae.
‘May I?’ he asked, and put out his hand. Van Boorst passed him the ball and watched with great vigilance as Harry counted the antennae.
Harry nodded. ‘Twenty-four,’ he said.
‘Same as the number of apples made,’ said Van Boorst. ‘The number had some symbolic value for the engineer who designed and made it. It was the age of his sister when she took her own life.’
‘And how many of them have you got in your cupboard?’
‘Only eight. Including this piece de resistance in gold.’ He took out a ball which gleamed matt in the light from the electric bulb, then
returned it to the cupboard. ‘But it is not for sale. You would have to kill me to get your paws on that one.’
‘So you’ve sold thirteen since Kluit bought his?’
‘And for ever increasing sums. It is a guaranteed investment, Monsieur Hole. Old instruments of torture have a loyal body of followers who are keen to pay, croyez-moi.’
‘I believe you,’ Harry said, trying to press down one of the antennae.
‘Spring-loaded,’ Van Boorst said. ‘Once the wire has been pulled, the victim will not be able to remove the apple from their mouth. Nor will anyone else for that matter. Do not take step two if you want to retract the circular ridges. Don’t pull the wire, please.’
‘Step two?’
‘Give it to me.’
Harry passed Van Boorst the ball. The Belgian carefully threaded a biro through the loop, held it horizontal and at the same height as the ball and then let go of the ball. As the wire became taut there was another bang. The Leopold’s apple jiggled fifteen centimetres below the biro and the sharp needles sticking out of each of the antennae glistened.
‘A faen,’ Harry swore in Norwegian.
The Belgian smiled. ‘The Mai Mai called the device “Blood of the Sun”. This sweet child has several names.’ He placed the apple on the table, put the biro in the opening where the wire came from, pushed hard, and the needles and antennae retracted with a bang, and the royal apple regained its smooth round shape.
‘Impressive,’ Harry said. ‘How much?’
‘Six thousand dollars,’ Van Boorst said. ‘Usually I add a bit each time, but you can have it for the same price I sold the last one.’
‘Why’s that?’ Harry asked, running his forefinger over the sleek metal.
‘Because you have come a long way,’ Van Boorst said, blowing cigarette smoke into the room. ‘And because I like your accent.’
‘Mm. And who was the last buyer?’
Van Boorst chuckled. ‘Just as no one will ever find out that you have been here, I will not tell you about my other customers. Does that not sound reassuring, monsieur…? See, I have already forgotten your name.’
Harry nodded. ‘Six hundred,’ he said.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Six hundred dollars.’
Van Boorst emitted the same brief chuckle. ‘Ridiculous. But the price you mention happens to be the price of a three-hour guided tour of the nature reserve where there are mountain gorillas. Would you prefer that, Monsieur Hole?’
‘You can keep the royal apple,’ Harry said, taking out a slim wad of twenty-dollar bills from his back pocket. ‘I’m offering you six hundred for information about who bought apples from you.’
He placed the wad on the table in front of Van Boorst. And on the top an ID card.
‘Norwegian police,’ Harry said. ‘At least two women have been killed by the product over which you have a monopoly.’
Van Boorst bent over the money and studied the ID card without touching either.
‘If that is the case I am truly sorry,’ he said, and it sounded as if his voice had become even more gravelly. ‘Believe me. But my personal security is probably worth more than six hundred dollars. If I were to talk openly about all the people who have shopped here my life expectancy would be…’
‘You should worry more about your life expectancy in a Congolese prison,’ Harry said.
Van Boorst laughed again. ‘Nice try, Hole. But the Chief of Police in Goma happens to be a personal acquaintance of mine, and anyway -’ he threw his arms in the air – ‘what have I done after all?’
‘What you have done is less interesting,’ Harry said, taking a photo out of his breast pocket. ‘The Norwegian state is one of the most important providers of aid to the Congo. If the Norwegian authorities ring Kinshasa, name you as a non-cooperative source of the murder weapon in a Norwegian double murder, what do you think will happen?’
Van Boorst was no longer smiling.
‘You won’t be falsely convicted of anything, gracious, no,’ Harry said. ‘You’ll just be on remand, which should not be confused with punishment. It’s the judicious confinement of a person while a case is being investigated and perhaps there are fears that evidence may have been tampered with. But it is prison nevertheless. And this investigation could take a long time. Have you ever seen the inside of a Congolese prison, Van Boorst? No, I suppose there are not many white men who have.’
Van Boorst pulled the dressing gown round him tighter. Eyed Harry while gnawing at the cigarette holder. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘a thousand dollars.’
‘Five hundred,’ Harry said.
‘Five? But you-’
‘Four,’ Harry said.
‘Done!’ Van Boorst shouted, raising his arms into the air. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Everything,’ Harry said, leaning against the wall and producing a pack of cigarettes.
When, half an hour later, Harry stepped out of Van Boorst’s house and into Joe’s Land Rover, darkness had fallen.
‘The hotel,’ Harry said.
The hotel turned out to be right down by the lake. Joe warned Harry against swimming. Not because of the guinea parasite he would be unlikely to discover until one day a thin worm began to wriggle under his skin, but because of the methane gas that rose from the bottom in the form of large bubbles that could render him unconscious and precipitate drowning.
Harry sat on the balcony, looking down on two long-legged creatures walking stilt-like over the illuminated lawn. They looked like flamingos in peacock costume. On the floodlit tennis court two young black boys were playing with just two balls, both so ragged that they looked like rolled-up socks sailing to and fro across the semi-torn net. Every now and then aeroplanes thundered across the sky, above the hotel roof.
Harry heard the clink of bottles at the bar. It was exactly sixty-eight paces from where he was sitting. He had counted when he entered. He took out his phone and rang Kaja’s number.
She sounded happy to hear his voice. Happy anyway.
‘I’m snowbound in Ustaoset,’ she said. ‘It’s coming down horses and cows here, not cats and dogs. But at least I’ve been invited to dinner. And the guest book was interesting.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘The page for the day we’re interested in was missing.’
‘There you go. Did you check if-’
‘Yes, I checked if there were any fingerprints or if the writing had gone through to the next page.’ She giggled, and Harry guessed that she had had a couple of glasses of wine.
‘Mm. I was thinking more of-’
‘Yes, I checked what had been written the day before and after. But almost no one stays more than one night in such basic accommodation. Unless they’re snowed in. And the weather was clear on the 7th of November. But the officer up here has promised me that he’ll check the guest books at the surrounding cabins on the days before and after to see which guests might have stayed over at Havass on their trek.’
‘Good. Sounds like we’re getting warmer.’
‘Maybe. How about you?’
‘Bit cooler here, I’m afraid. I’ve found Van Boorst, but none of the fourteen customers he dealt with were Scandinavian. He was fairly sure. I have six names and addresses, but they’re all known collectors. Otherwise there were a few names he half remembered, a few descriptions, that’s all. There are two more apples, but Van Boorst happened to know they were still in the hands of a collector in Caracas. Did you check out Adele and her visa?’
‘I called the Rwandan consulate in Sweden. I have to confess I expected chaos but everything was bang on the button.’
‘The Congo’s small, straightforward big brother.’
‘They had a copy of Adele’s visa application, and the dates matched. The period covered by the visa is well out of date now, but of course they had no idea where she was. They told me to contact the immigration authorities in Kigali. I was given a number, tried it and was bounced around between offices like a pinball, until I was
put through to an English-speaking know-all who pointed out that there was no cooperation agreement with Rwanda in that area, regretted politely that he would have to decline my request and wished me and my family a long and happy life. You haven’t got a sniff of anything, either?’
‘No. I showed Van Boorst the photo of Adele. He said the only woman who had bought anything off him was a woman with big rust-red curls and an East German accent.’
‘East German accent? Does such a thing exist?’
‘I don’t know, Kaja. This man walks around in a dressing gown, has a cigarette holder, is an alcoholic and a specialist in accents. I’m trying to keep my mind on the case and then get out.’
She laughed. White wine, Harry wagered. Red-wine drinkers don’t laugh as much.
‘But I have an idea,’ he said. ‘Landing cards.’
‘Yes?’
‘You have to give the address of where you plan to stay on your first night. If they hold onto the cards in Kigali and there is further info, such as a forwarding address, perhaps I can find out where Adele went. That might be a lead. For all we know she may be the only person alive who knows who was at the Havass cabin that night.’
‘Good luck, Harry.’
‘Good luck to you, too.’
He rang off. Of course he could have asked her who she was having dinner with, but if that had been relevant to the investigation she would probably have told him.
Harry sat on the balcony until the bar closed and the clinking of bottles stopped, to be replaced by the sounds of lovemaking from an open window above. Throaty, monotonous cries. They reminded him of the gulls at Andalsnes when he and his grandfather used to get up at the crack of dawn to go fishing. His father never went with him. Why not? And why had Harry never thought about it, why hadn’t he instinctively known that Olav didn’t feel at home in a fishing boat? Had he already understood, as a five-year-old, that his father had opted for an education and left the farm precisely so that he wouldn’t have to sit in boat? Nevertheless, his father wanted to return and spend eternity there. Life was strange. Death, at any rate.
Harry lit up a cigarette. The sky was starless and black apart from above the Nyiragongo crater, where a red glow smouldered. Harry felt a smarting pain as an insect stung him. Malaria. Methane gas. Lake Kivu glittered in the distance. Very nice, very deep.
