by Jo Nesbo
Harry's mobile bleeped. He pulled it out and read the text from Halvorsen. A Christo Stankic had stayed at Scandia Hotel by Oslo Central Station the night before the murder.
'What's AA like?' Aune asked. 'Is it helping you to abstain?'
'Well,' Harry said, getting up, 'yes and no.'
A scream jolted him back into reality.
He turned and looked into a pair of saucer eyes and a black hole of an open mouth a few centimetres from his face. The child pressed its nose against the glass partition in Burger King's playroom before falling backwards onto the carpet of red, yellow and blue plastic balls with a whine of glee.
He wiped the remains of ketchup from his mouth, emptied his tray into the bin and rushed out into Karl Johans gate. Tried to huddle up into the thin suit jacket, but the cold was merciless. He decided to buy a new coat as soon as he had got himself a decent room in Scandia Hotel.
Six minutes later he walked through the doors of the hotel lobby and queued up behind a couple who were obviously checking in. The female receptionist cast a fleeting glance at him without any sign of recognition. Then she bent over the new guests' papers while speaking in Norwegian. The woman turned to him. A blonde. Attractive, he noticed. Even if in a plain kind of way. He smiled back. That was as much as he managed. Because he had seen her before. Just a few hours ago. Outside the building in Goteborggata.
Without moving from the spot he inclined his head and put his hands in his jacket pockets. The grip on the gun was firm and reassuring. Taking great care, he raised his head, spotted the mirror behind the receptionist and stared. But the image blurred, became double. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and opened them again. The tall man gradually came into focus. The shorn skull, the pale skin with the red nose, the hard, pronounced features that were at variance with the sensitive mouth. It was him. The second man in the flat. The policeman. He took stock of the reception area. They were the only people around. And, as though to remove the last shadow of doubt, he heard two familiar words amid all the Norwegian. Christo Stankic. He forced himself to remain calm. How they had managed to trace him he had no idea, but the consequences were beginning to dawn on him.
The blonde woman was given a key by the receptionist, grabbed what looked like a tool case and walked towards the lift. The tall man said something to the receptionist and she made a note. Then the policeman turned round and their eyes met for an instant before he headed for the exit.
The receptionist smiled, articulated a rehearsed, friendly Norwegian phrase and sent him an enquiring look. He asked her if she had a nonsmoking room on the top floor.
'Let me see, sir.' She tapped away on the keyboard.
'Excuse me. The man you were talking with, wasn't he the policeman whose photo has been in the newspapers?'
'I don't know.' She smiled.
'Think it was, he's famous, what's his name again…?'
She glanced down at her notebook. 'Harry Hole. Is he famous?'
'Harry Hole?'
'Yes.'
'Wrong name. I must have made a mistake.'
'I have one free room. If you want it, you'll have to fill in this card and show your passport. How would you like to pay?'
'How much is it?'
She checked the price.
'Sorry,' he smiled. 'Too expensive.'
He left the hotel and went into the railway station, headed for the toilet and locked himself in a cubicle. There he sat, trying to organise his thoughts. They had the name. So he had to find some accommodation where he would not have to show his passport. And Christo Stankic could forget about booking a plane, boat, train or even crossing a national border. What was he going to do? He would have to ring Zagreb and talk to her.
He strolled into the square outside the station. A numbing wind swept the open area as, with chattering teeth, he kept an eye on the public telephones. A man was leaning against the white hot-dog vehicle in the middle. He was wearing a quilted down jacket and trousers and resembled an astronaut. Was he imagining it or was the man keeping the phones under surveillance? Could they have traced his calls and were they waiting for him to return? No, impossible. He hesitated. If they were tapping the phones, there was a chance he might give her away. He made up his mind. The call could wait. What he needed now was a room with a bed and a heater. They would want cash at the kind of place he was looking for now, and he had spent his last money on the hamburger.
Inside the high concourse, between the shops and the platforms, he found a cash machine. He took out his Visa card, read the English instructions telling him to keep the magnetic strip to the right, and went to put the card in the slot. His hand stopped. The card was made out in the name of Christo Stankic, too. It would be registered and somewhere an alarm would go off. He hesitated. Then he returned the card to his wallet. He sauntered through the concourse. The shops were closing. He didn't even have enough money to buy a warm jacket. A security guard was giving him the once-over. He stumbled into Jernbanetorget again. A northerly wind was sweeping through the square. The man by the hotdog stand was gone. But there was another by the tiger sculpture.
'I need some money for a place to sleep tonight.'
He didn't need to know any Norwegian to understand what the man was asking him for. It was the same young junkie he had given money to earlier in the day. Money he was in dire need of now. He shook his head and cast a glance at the shivering collection of junkies by what he had at first taken to be a bus stop. The white bus had arrived.
Harry's chest and lungs ached. The good ache. His thighs burned. The good burn.
When he was stuck on a case he sometimes did what he was doing now – he went down to the basement fitness room at Police HQ and cycled. Not because it made him think better, but because it made him stop thinking.
'They said you were here.' Gunnar Hagen mounted the ergometer bike beside him. The tight yellow T-shirt and the cycling shorts emphasised rather than covered the muscles in the POB's lean, almost ravaged body. 'What program are you on?'
'Number nine,' Harry panted.
Hagen regulated the height of the saddle while standing on the pedals and then punched in the necessary settings on the cycle computer. 'I gather you've had quite a dramatic day today.'
Harry nodded.
'I'll understand if you want to apply for sick leave,' Hagen said. 'After all, this is peacetime.'
'Thank you, but I'm feeling pretty fresh, boss.'
'Good. I've just spoken to Torleif.'
'The Chief Super?'
'We need to know how the case is going. There have been phone calls. The Salvation Army is popular, and influential people in town would like to know whether we'll clear the case up before Christmas. Peace and Yuletide goodwill and all that stuff.'
'The politicians coped fine with six fatal OD cases in their Yuletide last year.'
'I was asking for an update on the case, Hole.'
Harry could feel the sweat stinging his nipples.
'Well, no witnesses have come forward despite the photos in Dagbladet today. And Beate Lonn says that the photos suggest we are not dealing with one killer, but at least two. And I share her opinion. The man at Jon Karlsen's flat was wearing a camel-hair coat and a neckerchief, and the clothes match those of the man in Egertorget the evening before the murder.'
'Only the clothes?'
'I couldn't see his face very well. And Jon Karlsen can't remember a great deal. One of the residents has admitted she let an Englishman in to leave a Christmas present outside Jon Karlsen's door.'
'Right,' said Hagen. 'But we'll keep the theory about several killers to ourselves. Go on.'
'There's not much more to say.'
'Nothing?'
Harry checked the speedometer as with calm determination he stepped up the pace to thirty-five kilometres an hour.
'Well, we have a false passport belonging to a Croat, a Christo Stankic, who was not on the Zagreb plane today and should have been. We found out he had been staying at Scandi
a Hotel. Lonn examined his room for DNA. They don't have so many guests staying so we hoped the receptionist would recognise the man from our photos.'
'And?'
'Afraid not.'
'What is our basis for thinking this is our man then?'
'The false passport,' Harry said, stealing a glimpse at Hagen's speedometer. Forty kilometres an hour.
'And how will you find him?'
'Well, names leave traces in the information age and we have alerted all our standard contacts. If anyone bearing the name of Christo Stankic sets foot in a hotel, buys a plane ticket or uses a credit card, we will know at once. According to the receptionist he had enquired after a telephone booth, and she directed him to Jernbanetorget. Telenor is going to send us a list of outgoing calls over the last two days from the public phones there.'
'So all you have is a Croat with a false passport who didn't turn up for his flight,' Hagen said. 'You're stuck, aren't you.'
Harry didn't answer.
'Try thinking laterally,' Hagen said.
'Right, boss,' Harry drawled.
'There are always alternatives,' Hagen said. 'Have I told you about the Japanese platoon and the cholera outbreak?'
'Don't think I've had the pleasure, boss.'
'They were in the jungle north of Rangoon and kept bringing up everything they ate and drank. They were dehydrating, but the leader refused to lie down and die, so he ordered them to empty their morphine syringes and use them to inject themselves with the water from their canteens.'
Hagen increased his tempo and Harry listened in vain for any signs of breathlessness.
'It worked. But after a few days the only water they had left was a barrel teeming with mosquito larvae. Then the second in command suggested sticking the syringes in the flesh of the fruit growing around them and injecting it into the bloodstream. In theory, fruit juice is 90 per cent water anyway, and what did they have to lose? It saved the platoon, Hole. Imagination and courage.'
'Imagination and courage,' wheezed Hole. 'Thanks, boss.'
He pedalled for all he was worth and could hear the crackle of his own breathing, like fire through an open stove door. The speedometer showed 42. He glanced over at the POB's. 47. Breathing? Even.
Harry was reminded of a sentence from a thousand-year-old book he had been given by a bank robber, The Art of War. 'Choose your battles.' And he knew this was one battle he should withdraw from. Because he would lose, whatever he did.
Harry slowed down. The speedometer showed 35. To his surprise, he didn't feel frustration, just weary resignation. Perhaps he was growing up, perhaps he was finished with being the idiot who lowered his horns and attacked anyone waving a red rag? Harry snatched a sidelong glance. Hagen's legs were going like pistons now, and the smooth layer of sweat on his face glistened in the white light from the lamp.
Harry dried his sweat. Took two deep breaths. Then went for it again. The wonderful pain returned in seconds.
13
Wednesday, 17 December. The Ticking.
Every so often Martine thought that the square in Plata had to be the basement staircase to hell. Nevertheless, she was terrified by rumours going around that in spring the town hall's welfare committee was going to abandon the scheme for the open trading of drugs. The overt argument put forward by opponents of Plata was that the area attracted young people to drugs. Martine's opinion was that anyone who thought that the life you saw played out in Plata could be attractive either had to be crazy or had never set foot there.
The covert argument was that this terrain, delimited by a white line in the tarmac next to Jernbanetorget, like a border, disfigured the image of the city. And was it not a glaring admission of failure in the world's most successful – or at least richest – social democracy to allow drugs and money to exchange hands openly in the very heart of the capital?
Martine agreed with that. That there had been a failure. The battle for the drug-free society was lost. On the other hand, if you wanted to prevent drugs from gaining further ground it was better for the drug dealing to take place under the ever-watchful eyes of surveillance cameras than under bridges along the Akerselva and in dark backyards along Radhusgata and the southern side of Akershus Fortress. And Martine knew that most people whose work was in some way connected with Narco-Oslo – the police, social workers, street preachers and prostitutes – all thought the same: that Plata was better than the alternatives. But it was not a pretty sight.
'Langemann!' she shouted to the man standing in the darkness outside their bus. 'Don't you want any soup tonight?'
But Langemann sidled away. He had probably bought his fix and was off to inject the medicine.
She concentrated on ladling soup for a Mediterranean type in a blue jacket when she heard chattering teeth beside her and saw a man dressed in a thin suit jacket awaiting his turn. 'Here you are,' she said, pouring out his soup.
'Hello, sweetie,' came a rasping voice.
'Wenche!'
'Come over and thaw out a poor wretch,' said the ageing prostitute with a hearty laugh, and embraced Martine. The smell of the damp skin and body that undulated against the tight-fitting leopard-pattern dress was overwhelming. But there was another smell, one she recognised, a smell that had been there before Wenche's broadside of fragrances had overpowered everything else.
They sat down at one of the empty tables.
Although some of the foreign working girls who had flooded the area in the last year also used drugs, it was not as widespread as among their home-grown rivals. Wenche was one of the few Norwegians who did not indulge. Furthermore, in her words, she had begun to work more from home with a fixed clientele, so the intervals between meeting Martine had lengthened.
'I'm here to look for a girlfriend's son,' Wenche said. 'Kristoffer. I'm told he's on shit.'
'Kristoffer? Don't know him.'
'Aaah!' She dismissed it. 'Forget it. You've got other things on your mind, I can see.'
'Have I?'
'Don't fib. I can see when a girl's in love. Is it him?'
Wenche nodded towards the man in the Salvation Army uniform with a Bible in one hand who had just sat down next to the man in the thin suit jacket.
Martine puffed out her cheeks. 'Rikard? No, thank you.'
'Sure? His eyes have been trailing you ever since I arrived.'
'Rikard is alright,' she sighed. 'At any rate he volunteered for this shift at short notice. The person who should have been here is dead.'
'Robert Karlsen?'
'Did you know him?'
Wenche answered with a heavy-hearted nod, then brightened up again. 'But forget the dead and tell Mummy who you're in love with. It's not before time, by the way.'
Martine smiled. 'I didn't even know I was in love.'
'Come on.'
'No, this is too silly. I-'
'Martine,' said another voice.
She peered up and saw Rikard's imploring eyes.
'The man sitting there says he has no clothes, no money and nowhere to stay. Do you know if the Hostel has any free places?'
'Call them and ask,' Martine said. 'They do have some winter clothes.'
'Right.' Rikard didn't move, even though Martine was facing Wenche. She didn't need to look up to know that his top lip was sweaty.
Then he mumbled a 'thanks' and went back to the man in the suit jacket.
'Tell me then,' Wenche urged in a whisper.
Outside, the northerly wind had lined up its small-calibre artillery.
Harry walked along with his sports bag over his shoulder, narrowing his eyes against the wind, which was making the sharp, almost invisible snowflakes imbed small pinpricks in the cornea. As he passed Blitz, the squatters' property in Pilestredet, his mobile rang. It was Halvorsen.
'There have been two calls to Zagreb in the last two days from the phones in Jernbanetorget. Same number both times. I rang the number and got through to a hotel receptionist. Hotel International. They couldn't tell me who had rung from O
slo or who this person was trying to contact. Nor had they heard of anyone called Christo Stankic.'
'Hm.'
'Shall I follow up?'
'No,' Harry sighed. 'We'll let it go until something tells us this Stankic might be interesting. Switch off the light before you go and we'll talk tomorrow.'
'Hang on!'
'I'm not going anywhere.'
'There's more. The uniformed boys have received a call from a waiter at Biscuit. He said he was in the toilet this morning and bumped into one of the customers.'
'What was he doing there?'
'I'll come to that. You see, the customer had something in his hand-'
'I mean the waiter. Restaurant employees always have their own toilets.'
'I didn't ask,' Halvorsen said, becoming impatient. 'Listen. This customer was holding something green and dripping.'
'Sounds like he should see a doctor.'
'Very funny. The waiter swore it was a gun covered in soap. The lid of the container was off.'
'Biscuit,' Harry repeated as the information sank in. 'That's on Karl Johan.'
'Two hundred metres from the crime scene. I bet a crate of beer that's our gun. Er… sorry, I bet-'
'By the way, you still owe me two hundred kroner. Give me the rest of the story.'
'Here comes the best bit. I asked for a description. He couldn't give me one.'
'Sounds like the refrain in this case.'
'Except that he recognised the guy by his coat. A very ugly camelhair coat.'
'Yes!' Harry shouted. 'The guy with the scarf in the photo of Egertorget the night before Karlsen was shot.'
'Incidentally, the waiter reckoned it was imitation. And he sounded like he knew about that sort of thing.'
'What do you mean?'
'You know. The way they speak.'
'Who are they?'
'Hello! Poofs. Whatever. The man with the gun was through the door and gone. That's all I have for the moment. I'm on my way to Biscuit to show the waiter the photos now.'
