Sørensen nodded in acknowledgment and glanced at the clock, which said two in the morning.
“Tell me what happened,” he said.
In brief terms Milo went through the sequence of events. The electronic traces Temoor had found. Olena in the compartment in the storage building. The escape in the car.
He did not need to spice up the story. The drama was written in his bandages.
“Good, Milo. Bloody well done.”
“And you? How have you been?”
“Good. It was absolutely no wild-goose chase. I’m coming straight from questioning with Guldbjerg now. He put all the cards on the table at once, and we’ve confiscated evidence in the office space that turned out to be a production site for dope.”
“Steroids?”
“Yep. They imported the various ingredients from Asia, and cooked it together themselves.”
The first few years they had collaborated with several members of what later became the Downtown Gang. But then the Pakistani partners decided to use their own contacts in India and Pakistan, and smuggle finished products instead.
“The Pakistanis thought it was lower risk because the products are purer, and they agreed to share the market between them,” Sørensen continued.
“But something went wrong,” said Milo.
“Or someone got greedy. Guldbjerg and Henriksen started supplying parts of the market in Oslo. Undercut the Pakistanis in price. That led to a major confrontation.”
“What about Tormod Tollefsen in the middle of all this?”
Sørensen shook his head.
“Poor kid. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Guldbjerg remembers that Henriksen ‘had problems with a student he had tried to talk into buying steroids,’ but that he thought he had it under control. It seems as if Henriksen found customers among his middle-school students. Actually, he had to leave his position at a school in Son because of complaints from parents.”
“And yet he got another job at a different school,” said Milo.
“Yes. I called the rector at Ingieråsen School just after midnight. She confirmed that they never checked Henriksen’s references properly. She said something like, they had so little time, and that he could start on short notice.”
Milo leaned forward toward Sørensen’s cigarette pack and fired up a smoke. The nicotine made him dizzy, as if his body were coming in for a landing. But his thoughts were still whirling.
“The worst thing is that she also confirmed that the school administration had discussed Henriksen, but that they didn’t get around to doing anything before the killings.”
Milo tapped a little ash into an empty coffee cup.
“But they didn’t tell you this two years ago?”
Sørensen shook his head.
“They didn’t want to malign a dead man, she said.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Milo said, shaking his head.
“Instead they’ve maligned a dead boy. I informed her that we’ll investigate her for obstruction of justice.”
“Good.”
“And in the offices of Guldbjerg’s company we found lists of names of everyone from paid customs officers to middlemen and users. Droves of people are being hauled in while we’re sitting here.”
“Very good,” said Milo.
He put out the cigarette and got up. His body ached, and the effect of the pain relievers was starting to wear off.
“Benedetti called a few hours ago,” he said.
“Okay, what did he say?”
“Salvatore held out for a few hours and flatly denied it, even if he couldn’t come up with a decent alibi. But when they confronted him with the fact that they had found strands of light hair on a suit coat at his home, the same suit coat he had on when he was caught by the video camera a few hours before the murder, he threw in his cards. The strands of hair are now being checked against Ingrid Tollefsen’s DNA.”
“Very good. In a way it’s good it went that way. She was killed in Rome, Italian police arrested the killer, and he’ll be tried before an Italian court,” said Sørensen.
He stood up too, and held his hand out toward Milo.
“Congratulations. Two homicides cleared up in barely two weeks.”
Milo took his hand, but did not say anything.
“You don’t seem especially satisfied, Milo.”
“I don’t know. Banno is still at large. The twins too…”
“They won’t get far. Believe me. We’ll have them soon.”
“… and I’m struggling with the motive for Salvatore.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why did he kill Ingrid?”
“Presumably because they had a relationship. Because she threatened to expose him to his wife.”
Milo shook his head.
“I can’t get that to add up. An affair. He’s not the first Italian man with a relationship on the side, and he’ll hardly be the last.”
Sørensen shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m sure you know that better than me. What we do know is that there was a relationship between them. We know they had contact. We know that Ingrid threatened to tell his wife. And we know that he has confessed.”
“But what about the fact that she wanted to talk with the ethics director? It irritates me that we haven’t got hold of him. It sounds like he’s been moved to a new position in the Forum group, off somewhere in Vietnam.”
Sørensen indulged himself in two pouches of snuff.
“Milo, we have two homicides cleared up. Now I’m going home and sleep for a few hours, and you should too.”
They separated at the elevator, and Milo took it alone down to the quiet garage. On the way he checked his e-mail, and swallowed when he saw the message from Kathrin.
From: Andersson, Kathrin
Subject: What happened?
To: Cavalli, Milo
Dearest Milo.
I have thought and thought about what really happened when you disappeared from the restaurant in New York, since you don’t answer my text messages. I’ve replayed the conversations, interpreted what you said. But it didn’t give me any explanation.
But then suddenly I think I understood. You must have seen my phone ring when I was away. You must have seen the name, and you must have interpreted it all in the worst sense.
I made some discreet inquiries with Forum afterward and realized then that you’ve been investigating the company.
Regardless of what you think about me, I simply must tell you this:
I liked you very much.
I wanted to get better acquainted with you.
I didn’t know that you were investigating Forum.
Your name never came up in conversations with them.
I’ve worked for them and given advice in connection with a potential acquisition.
I would like to see you again.
And if you have any desire to talk to me or, even better, see me, you know where to reach me.
XOX
Kathrin
He felt that he missed her. As much as he missed Theresa.
And he didn’t have the energy to call either of them.
He got into the Alfa Romeo he was now driving after wrecking the Fiat, and after the ambulance had picked up Oriana and her little sister. Her bag was on the passenger seat, which she asked him to take care of as she stepped into the ambulance and sat down by her sister’s stretcher.
He threw off his topcoat, and the bag fell down on the floor. The contents spread out, and he cursed. He quickly collected her notebook, a tin of lozenges and a bunch of keys and set them back in the bag. Then he leaned down and picked up her phone, and looked at it.
What was it Oriana had said? That it was Ingrid’s old phone and something about her paying for service and any apps for it.
He pressed on it and unlocked the keyboard. It was not password protected, and the menu screen appeared.
Ingrid Tollefsen’s old phone.
There were at l
east thirty apps. A Chechen newspaper and a meditation app were side by side with an app for a medical dictionary.
Did this mean that the phone contained both Ingrid’s and Oriana’s apps? That Ingrid had not deleted the content before Oriana got the phone?
He scanned further and stopped at the Dropbox icon. He quickly pressed it and came into a folder that contained two documents. One of them had the title “Project Verbacom.”
He felt his body quiver and his fingers holding the phone began to shake. His thoughts went to the slip of paper they had found in the pill bottle in Rome. The paper with the illegible letters, apart from v-e-r-b-a.
He clicked into the document and quickly skimmed it. He took out his own phone, made a quick search on Google and then called Sørensen.
“What is it?” the chief inspector asked sleepily.
“I went into Oriana’s phone, which is Ingrid’s old phone. Ingrid’s Dropbox is active,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Ingrid’s Dropbox. I found—”
“What the hell is a Dropbox?” Sørensen asked.
“It’s a folder that means you can store documents externally—with the Dropbox app—and then have access to documents from many different devices. For example, your computer, phone, iPad.”
“I see.”
“There are two documents in her box.”
“Which are?”
Milo explained the content, and Sørensen listened silently. At last he said, “So that was what she meant by the letters on the scrap of paper. Are you quite sure these documents are genuine?”
“Absolutely,” Milo replied.
“Well, that does change things a little.”
“I just googled him, and saw that he’s in Oslo now. He’s going to give a lecture at a conference at the School of Economics BI tomorrow. Or today, that is. In a few hours.”
“We’ll have to talk with the assistant chief of police,” said Sørensen.
* * *
Agathe Rodin was in civilian clothes and not happy to be wakened in the middle of the night. She sat with her arms crossed without taking off her coat.
When Milo showed her the printout of the two documents he had found in Ingrid Tollefsen’s Dropbox folder, she sighed and looked at them with a heavy gaze.
“This is extremely well done,” she began.
“But?” asked Sørensen.
“But it won’t hold for a conviction.”
Milo leaped up from the chair.
“We’ve established the motive! We have the whole sequence of events!” he shouted.
Rodin did not seem bothered by the outburst, but got up quietly and patted him on his healthy shoulder.
“I know that. But it won’t hold up in court,” she said, heading for the door.
“But can we bring him in for questioning?” said Milo.
She turned around at the door.
“Bring him in. Make him sweat. But you’re not arresting him.”
She turned and disappeared, and neither of them said anything before the sound of her high heels had died away.
“If we don’t manage to convict him within the legal system, we should make sure he gets his judgment outside it anyway,” said Milo doggedly.
He took out his phone and looked up Ada Hauge’s number. He had promised to tell the Klassekampen journalist if there was any new information.
The murder of Ingrid will be fully explained at ten o’clock this morning. School of Economics BI. The main auditorium, he wrote.
“What do you intend to do?” asked Sørensen.
“I’m going to humiliate him,” answered Milo.
“I’ll be there. But you understand that there will be disciplinary action against us if you do anything outside regulations?”
“It will be worth it,” answered Milo.
40
The auditorium was packed with students and staff.
It was almost ten, and Milo had been there an hour for the final preparations. Sørensen had positioned himself at the far end of the third row.
Milo himself sat in the middle row, toward the center aisle.
The double door to the right of the podium opened up, and a group of five men hurried in. Milo recognized both the communications director for Forum Healthcare and the Norwegian director, Thomas Veivåg.
But it was the man in the middle everyone had come to see and hear. He greeted several of the professors, and one of them took the microphone.
“It’s very gratifying to see so many here today. Especially because we have such an important topic on the agenda. Namely, how the forces in the business community join with society in general. And there are few industries in the world where this is clearer than in the pharmaceutical industry. For that reason it is my great pleasure to introduce Kenneth D’Marco, head of one of the world’s most innovative companies, Forum Healthcare.”
The audience applauded, and D’Marco took the podium smiling. He shook the hand of the professor who had just introduced him again, and on the big screen behind him the PowerPoint presentation came into view:
SHAREHOLDER VALUE—CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
HOW BUSINESS CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
By Kenneth D’Marco
CEO & PRESIDENT, FORUM HEALTHCARE
BI NORWEGIAN SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS
“Thank you.” He held his hands out to the side, almost like a president trying to dampen the applause. “I have truly looked forward to this meeting with you, where I will tell you how at Forum Healthcare we work every single day on projects that have direct impact on people’s everyday lives. Not only in the U.S. or here in Norway, but all over the world.”
He paused and pressed the wireless remote control, and the screen behind him was filled by a picture of a little boy.
“But first of all I want to share a little story with you. This is Nathan. The cutest little rascal in the world at age five, but with a serious heart defect.”
D’Marco took a sip of water before he continued to talk about how Nathan needed medications that stabilized his heart rhythm, even after necessary surgical interventions had been done.
“Nathan needs medicine every single day. Otherwise he will die.”
Then there was a stage pause.
“And he gets medicine. The pills he takes are called Betratex and were developed by our researchers twelve years ago. And that is why Nathan is living an almost normal life today.”
Behind him the image changed, and the gathering saw Nathan hitting a baseball with his dad, bicycling with friends and cuddling with his little sister.
“And it’s stories like this that make me proud of going to work every single day. Yes, we deliver results to our shareholders. But … we also help to keep people like little Nathan alive.”
Kenneth D’Marco spoke quietly and pounded in the message. Not once did he check the screen behind him. With a self-confidence only American top executives and politicians have, he mixed in personal stories and reinforced the message with images and text on the big screen.
Along the way he took off his jacket, a little later he rolled up his shirtsleeves Obama-style and after forty-five minutes he was done.
The applause was powerful, and D’Marco showed the assembly his broadest smile.
The professor who had introduced him came up to the podium, thanked him and took out a microphone.
“Thanks for an extremely inspiring talk. We have reserved time for questions, so just raise your hands. But please don’t ask the question until you’ve been given the microphone by one of our assistants in the hall. Both the lecture and this question-and-answer session are being sent on webcast, so it will be good if those who are following us online also hear the questions in their entirety.”
A woman in the fourth row raised her hand, and got a microphone. She wanted to know more about the company’s social projects and donations, and what D’Marco considered their most important contribution to society: innovation or direct financial support to nonp
rofit organizations and projects?
The next question was from a young man. He wanted to learn more about the Forum director’s predictions for investments in research in the next ten years, and if he thought publicly funded research was obsolete.
D’Marco answered calmly and self-confidently and appeared to enjoy the situation. The next few questions were about geography and future growth areas, and gradually there were fewer who raised their hands and asked to speak.
As the professor down on the podium let his gaze sweep across the assembly again, Milo raised his hand high and caught his attention.
“Yes, we have a question up there in the middle.”
Milo got a microphone from the technical staff and stood up. Several in the assembly turned around, D’Marco directed his gaze attentively toward him and noted the arm in a sling and the bandaged neck and chin.
“Goodness, have you been in an accident? I hope you’ve been given some adequate pain relievers. If not I have some tablets I can recommend,” said the American top executive.
The audience chuckled, and Milo smiled back.
“Just a work accident. First of all, thanks for an extremely interesting lecture,” he said.
The Forum head nodded contentedly.
“My question concerns the conflict of interest between companies listed on the stock exchange and the society in which the companies operate,” Milo began.
“One moment, before you continue: What conflict of interest are you talking about?” D’Marco asked from the podium.
Milo smiled contentedly that the head of Forum had let himself be provoked into asking a counterquestion. He wanted to produce an exchange that made it natural for him to keep the microphone as long as possible.
“I’m thinking about publicly traded companies’ goal of maximizing shareholder value, that is, making the greatest possible profit, versus society’s need to maximize the benefit and well-being of its inhabitants.”
D’Marco shook his head.
“There is no conflict of interest in that.”
“Isn’t there?”
Milo looked at him with surprise.
“That’s exactly what I’ve been talking about! About the coinciding interests between business and society.”
“Yes, I heard that—”
“But you don’t believe what I’ve said?” D’Marco interrupted.
The Oslo Conspiracy Page 26
