by Jo Nesbo
‘His name is Kalle Farrisen,’ Kari said.
She was reading aloud from the preliminary report. Simon had called the Commissioner and asked that it be sent to them. And requested immediate access to the crime scene. After all, it was still their turf.
‘Simon,’ the Commissioner had said, ‘take a look at it, by all means, but don’t get involved. You and I are too old for a pissing contest.’
‘You might be too old,’ Simon had replied.
‘You heard me, Simon.’
Simon pondered it from time to time. There was no doubt which of them had had the greatest potential. Where had the road forked? When had it been decided who would occupy which chair? Who would be sitting in the high-backed chair in the Commissioner’s office and who would be occupying the battered one in the Homicide Squad with his wings clipped? And that the best of them would end up in a chair in his study with a bullet from his own gun through his head.
‘The guitar strings around his head are bottom E and G and manufactured by Ernie Ball. The jack-to-jack cable is made by Fender,’ Kari read.
‘And the fan and the radiator?’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Go on.’
‘The fan was switched on. The medical examiner’s preliminary conclusion is that Kalle Farrisen suffocated.’
Simon studied the knot on the jack cable. ‘It looks like Kalle was forced to inhale the drug which was blown into his face. Would you agree?’
‘I would,’ Kari said. ‘He managed to hold his breath for a short while, but eventually he had to give in. The guitar strings prevented him from turning his head away. But he tried, that’s why he has injuries from the thinner guitar string. The heroin ends up in his nose, stomach and lungs, it’s absorbed into the bloodstream, he starts feeling drugged and carries on breathing. But more faintly now because the heroin is suppressing his respiration. And finally, he stops breathing altogether.’
‘Classic case of death by overdose,’ Simon said. ‘Same thing happened to several of his customers.’
He pointed to the cable. ‘And whoever tied this knot is left-handed.’
‘We can’t go on meeting like this.’
They turned round. Åsmund Bjørnstad was standing in the doorway with a wry smile and two people behind him who were holding a stretcher.
‘We want to move the body now, so if you’re done . . .’
‘We’ve seen everything we wanted to,’ Simon said, getting up laboriously. ‘Would it be all right if we took a look around?’
‘Of course,’ the Kripos investigator said, still with this half-smile, gallantly showing them the way. Simon rolled his eyes at Kari in surprise, who in return raised her eyebrows as if to say he’s changed his tune.
‘Any witnesses?’ Simon asked in the lift and looked at the broken glass.
‘No,’ Bjørnstad said. ‘But the guitarist from the band who found the body says that there was a guy here earlier in the evening. He claimed to be playing in a band called the Young Hopeless, but we’ve checked and that band no longer exists.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘The witness says the guy wore a hoodie that covered his head. Lots of young people do these days.’
‘So he was young?’
‘The witness thought so. Somewhere between twenty and twenty-five.’
‘What colour was his hoodie?’
Bjørnstad flipped open his notebook. ‘Grey, I believe.’
The lift doors opened, they stepped out carefully and straddled cordons and flags set out by the CSOs. There were four people on this floor. Two living and two dead. Simon nodded briefly to one of the living. He had a bushy ginger beard and was crouching on all fours over a body, holding a torch the size of a fountain pen in his hand. The deceased had a large wound under one eye. A dark red halo of blood on the floor surrounded his head. At the top of the halo the blood spatter formed a pattern that resembled a teardrop. Simon had once tried to explain to Else how a crime scene could be beautiful. He had tried once and never again.
Another and much bigger victim lay on the threshold with his upper body inside the door.
Simon’s gaze automatically scanned the walls and found the bullet hole in the wall. He noticed the hatch in the door and the mirror up under the ceiling. Then he took a step backwards into the lift, raised his right arm and took aim. Changed his mind and raised his left arm instead. He had to take one step to the right to make the angle fit with the trajectory of a bullet through the head and – if the skull hadn’t caused the bullet to change direction – into the bullet hole in the plaster. He closed his eyes. He had stood in the same position recently. On the steps outside the Iversen home. Aimed with his right hand. There he had also had to adjust his position to make the angle fit. Move one foot to just outside the flagstones. Onto the soft soil. The same soft soil which was around the bushes. But there hadn’t been a matching shoeprint on the soil next to the flagstones.
‘Shall we carry on the guided tour inside, ladies and gentlemen?’ Bjørnstad held the door open and waited until Kari and Simon had stepped over the body and entered. ‘The council rented out this room to what they thought was a band booking and management agency.’
Simon peered inside the empty safe. ‘What do you think happened?’
‘Gang-related incident,’ Bjørnstad said. ‘They hit the factory around closing time. The first victim was shot while he lay on the floor – we’ve recovered the bullet from the floorboards. The second victim was shot as he lay across the threshold – there’s a bullet in the floor there as well. They got the third man to open the safe. They took the money and the drugs, and then killed him downstairs to send a message to the competition about who’s in charge now.’
‘I see,’ Simon said. ‘And the shells?’
Bjørnstad laughed quickly. ‘I know. Sherlock Holmes smells a connection with the Iversen murder.’
‘No empty shells?’
Åsmund Bjørnstad looked from Simon to Kari and back to Simon. Then – with a magician’s hey presto smile – he produced a plastic bag from his jacket pocket. He dangled it in front of Simon’s face. It contained two empty shells.
‘Sorry to bust your theory, old boy,’ he said. ‘Besides, the big bullet holes in the victims indicate a far bigger calibre than the one we found in Agnete Iversen. That concludes your guided tour. I hope you enjoyed it.’
‘I just have three questions before we leave.’
‘Go on then, Chief Inspector Kefas.’
‘Where did you find the empty shells?’
‘Next to the bodies.’
‘Where were the victims’ weapons?’
‘They didn’t have any. Final question?’
‘Did the Commissioner tell you to be cooperative and give us the guided tour?’
Åsmund Bjørnstad laughed. ‘Possibly through my boss in Kripos. We always do what our bosses tell us, don’t we?’
‘Yes,’ Simon said. ‘If we want to get ahead, then that’s what we do. Thanks for the tour.’
Bjørnstad stayed behind in the room, but Kari followed Simon. She stopped behind him when Simon, rather than going straight into the lift, asked the bearded CSO to lend him his torch and went over to the bullet hole in the wall. Pointed the torch at it.
‘Have you already removed the bullet, Nils?’
‘That must be an old hole; we didn’t find any bullets there,’ Nils said while he examined the floor around the body with a simple magnifying glass.
Simon squatted down, moistened the tips of his fingers and pressed them against the floor right under the hole. He held up his fingers to Kari. She could see that tiny plaster particles had stuck to his skin.
‘Thanks for the use of your torch,’ Simon said and Nils looked up, nodded briefly and took the torch.
‘What was that about?’ Kari asked when the lift doors had closed in front of them.
‘I need a moment to think, then I’ll tell you,’ Simon said.
Kari was an
noyed. Not because she suspected her boss of being coy, but because she couldn’t follow him. Not being able to keep up wasn’t something she was used to. The doors opened and she stepped out. She turned round and looked quizzically at Simon, who was still inside the lift.
‘May I borrow your marble, please?’ he asked.
She sighed and stuck her hand into her pocket. Simon placed the small, yellow marble in the middle of the lift floor. It rolled at first slowly, then with increasing speed to the front of the lift where it disappeared down the gap between the inner and the outer doors.
‘Oops,’ Simon said. ‘Let’s go down to the basement and look for it.’
‘It’s not irreplaceable,’ Kari said. ‘I’ve got more at home.’
‘I’m not talking about the marble.’
Kari hastened after him again, still two steps behind. At least. A thought occurred to her. The thought of another job she could have gone for and could be doing right now. Better pay, more independence. No eccentric bosses and foul-smelling bodies. But that time would come; for now it was a question of arming herself with patience.
They found the stairwell, the basement corridor and the lift door. In contrast to the floors above this was a simple metal door with a mottled glass pane. Across the door was a sign. LIFT CONTROL. KEEP OUT. Simon shook the door handle. Locked.
‘Run back upstairs to the rehearsal rooms and see if you can find a cable,’ Simon said.
‘What kind of—’
‘Anything,’ he said and leaned against the wall.
She swallowed a protest and headed back to the stairs.
Two minutes later she was back with a jack-jack cable and watched while Simon unscrewed the plugs and stripped off the plastic around the wires. Then he bent the cable into a U-shape and slipped it in between the lift door and the frame at the height of the door handle. They heard a loud click, and a couple of sparks flew. He opened the door.
‘Christ,’ Kari said. ‘Where did you learn that?’
‘I was trouble when I was little,’ Simon said, levering himself down to the bottom of the lift shaft which was half a metre lower than the basement floor. He looked up the lift shaft. ‘If I hadn’t become a police officer . . .’
‘Isn’t this a bit risky? Kari said, feeling a prickling on her scalp. ‘What if the lift comes down?’
But Simon was already kneeling on all fours and sweeping the concrete floor with his hands.
‘Do you need a little light down there?’ she asked, hoping that he couldn’t hear the tension in her voice.
‘Always,’ he laughed.
A tiny scream escaped Kari when she heard a small bang and saw the thick, oiled wires starting to move. But Simon quickly got to his feet, pressed his palms against the basement floor and pulled himself up into the corridor. ‘Come,’ he said.
She half ran after him up the stairs, through the exit door and across the gravelled area.
‘Wait!’ she said before he got into the car which they had parked between the two derelict trucks. Simon stopped and looked at her across the roof of the car.
‘I know,’ he said.
‘What do you know?’
‘That it’s bloody irritating when your partner goes solo and doesn’t tell you what’s going on.’
‘Exactly! So when will you—’
‘But I’m not your partner, Kari Adel,’ Simon said. ‘I’m your boss and your mentor. It’ll happen when it happens. Do you understand?’
She looked at him. Saw the breeze toss his comically thin hair to and fro across the shiny scalp. Saw the flint in his otherwise friendly gaze.
‘Understood,’ she said.
‘Take these.’ He opened one hand and threw something across the roof of the car. She cupped hands and caught both items. She looked at them. One was the yellow marble. The other was an empty shell.
‘You can discover new things by changing your perspective and your location,’ he said. ‘You can compensate for any blind spots. Let’s go.’
She got into the passenger seat, he started the car and drove across the gravel to the gate. She kept her mouth shut. Waited. He stopped and looked for a long time and very carefully to the right and the left before he pulled out onto the road, like cautious, elderly male drivers are wont to do. Kari had always imagined it was because of lower testosterone levels. But it struck her now – almost as a new insight – that all rationality was built on experience.
‘At least one shot was fired inside the lift,’ he said and positioned himself behind a Volvo.
She still didn’t say anything.
‘And your objection is?’
‘That it doesn’t match the evidence,’ Kari said. ‘The only bullets were those that killed the victims and they were found right under them. The victims must have been lying on the floor when they were shot and that doesn’t match the angle if they were shot from the lift.’
‘No, and besides, there was a powder burn to the skin of the guy who was shot in the head, and burned cotton fibres in the shirt around the bullet wound on the other victim. Which suggests?’
‘That they were shot at close range while they were lying down. It matches the empty shell cases that were found next to them and the bullets in the floor.’
‘Right. But don’t you find it weird that the two men collapse on the floor and then they’re shot?’
‘Perhaps they got so scared when they saw the gun that they panicked and tripped. Or they were ordered to lie down before they were executed.’
‘Good thinking. But did you notice something about the blood around the body nearest the lift?’
‘That there was a lot of it?’
‘Yes.’ He spoke with a drawl that told her this wasn’t the end of it.
‘The blood had flowed from the victim’s head and formed a pool,’ she said. ‘It means that he wasn’t moved after he was shot.’
‘Yes, but at the edge of the pool, the blood was sprayed. As if it had splattered. In other words, the flowing blood covered parts of the area where it had first spattered from his head. And given the length and the range of the blood spurt, the victim must have been standing straight up when he was shot. That was why Nils was going over it with his magnifying glass – he couldn’t get the blood evidence to match.’
‘But you can?’
‘Yes,’ Simon said simply. ‘The killer fired the first shot from inside the lift. It went through the victim’s head and left the hole you saw in the wall. While the shell landed on the lift floor—’
‘—rolled along the sloping floor, fell through the crack and down the lift shaft?’
‘Yep.’
‘But . . . the bullet in the floorboard . . .’
‘The killer shot him again at close range.’
‘The entry wound . . .’
‘Our friend from Kripos thought the killer had used a bigger calibre bullet, but if he’d known more about ballistics, he would have noticed that the empty shells are from small calibre bullets. So the big entry wound is really two small, overlapping entry wounds which the killer tried to make look like one. That’s why he took away the first bullet which made the hole in the wall.’
‘So it wasn’t an old bullet hole as the CSO thought,’ Kari said. ‘That’s why there was fresh plaster dust on the floor right below.’
Simon smiled. She could see that he was pleased with her. And she realised to her surprise that it cheered her up.
‘Look at the type description and the serial number on the shell case. It’s a different kind of ammunition from what we found on the first floor. It means the shot the killer fired from the lift came from a different gun to the one he subsequently used on the victims. I think ballistics will be able to prove that they came from the victims’ own guns.’
‘Their own?’
‘This is more your area of expertise, Adel, but I find it hard to believe there would be three unarmed guys in a drug den. The killer took their guns with him so that we wouldn’t discover he’d used th
em.’
‘You’re right.’
‘The question,’ Simon said, pulling in behind a tram, ‘is of course why it matters so much to him that we don’t find the first bullet and the empty shell.’
‘Isn’t it obvious? The imprint from the firing pin would give us the gun’s serial number and the Gun Register would soon lead us to—’
‘Wrong. Look at the back of the shell. No mark. He was using an older gun.’
‘OK,’ Kari said, reminding herself never to use the word ‘obvious’ again. ‘Then I don’t know what it is. But I have a strong feeling that you’re about to tell me . . .’
‘I am, Adel. The empty shell you’re holding is the same type of ammo used to shoot Agnete Iversen.’
‘I see. But are you saying . . .?’
‘I believe the killer tried to cover up that he also killed Agnete Iversen,’ Simon said and stopped so abruptly for a yellow light that the car behind him sounded its horn. ‘The reason he picked up the empty shell at Iversen’s isn’t as I thought at first because it had a mark from the firing pin. It was because he was already planning a second killing and doing as much as he could to minimise the risk that we would make the connection. I bet that the empty shell the killer took with him from the Iversen house was of the same series as the one you have here.’
‘Same ammo type, but it’s a very common one, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what makes you so sure there’s a connection?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Simon said, staring at the traffic light as if it were a bomb with a timer. ‘But only ten per cent of the population is left-handed.’
She nodded. She tried her own reasoning. Gave up. Sighed. ‘Pass, I give up again.’
‘Kalle Farrisen was tied to the radiator by someone who is left-handed. Agnete Iversen was shot by someone who is left-handed.’
‘I understand about the former. But the latter . . .’
‘I should have worked it out much earlier. The angle from the doorway to the kitchen wall. If the bullet that killed Agnete Iversen was fired by a right-handed killer and from the spot I first believed, he would have had to stand on one side of the flagstone path and there would be prints in the soft soil from one of his shoes. The answer is of course that he had both feet on the flagstones because he was shooting with his left hand. Poor police work on my part.’
