Police hh-10

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘June’s fine,’ she said. ‘But I’m pretty sure the twenty-first is a Friday.’ He could hear the smile in her voice.

  ‘Big do or. .?’

  ‘Or just us and witnesses?’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘You can decide, but maximum ten people in total. We haven’t got the crockery for any more. And with five each you can invite everyone in your contacts list anyway.’

  He laughed. This could be good.

  ‘And if you’re thinking of Oleg as best man, he’s busy,’ she said.

  ‘I see.’

  Harry parked in front of the departures terminal and kissed Rakel with the boot still open.

  On his way back, he rang Øystein Eikeland. Harry’s taxi-driving drinking pal and sole childhood friend sounded plastered. On the other hand, Harry didn’t know how he sounded when he wasn’t.

  ‘Best man? Shit, Harry, I’m touched. You asking me. Shit, got a smile on the clock now.’

  ‘Twenty-first of June. Anything on your calendar then?’

  Øystein chuckled at the joke. The chuckling morphed into coughing. Which morphed into the gurgle of a bottle. ‘I’m touched, Harry. But the answer’s no. What you need is someone who can stand up straight in the church and speak with moderately clear diction at the meal. And what I need is an attractive woman at the table, free booze and no responsibility. I promise to wear my finest suit.’

  ‘Liar, you’ve never worn a suit, Øystein.’

  ‘That’s why they stay in such good shape. Not used much. Just like your pals, Harry. You could ring once in a while, you know.’

  ‘I suppose I could.’

  They rang off and Harry drove bumper to bumper to the city centre, running through the short list of remaining candidates for best man. To be precise, one. He dialled Beate Lønn’s number. Got voicemail after five seconds and left a message.

  The queue moved forward at snail’s pace.

  He dialled Bjørn Holm’s number.

  ‘Hiya, Harry.’

  ‘Is Beate at work?’

  ‘Off today.’

  ‘Beate? She’s never off. Got a cold?’

  ‘Dunno. She texted Katrine last night. Ill. Did you hear about Berg?’

  ‘Oh, I’d forgotten all about that,’ Harry lied. ‘Well?’

  ‘He didn’t strike.’

  ‘Shame. You keep at it. I’ll try her at home.’

  Harry hung up and called her landline.

  After letting the phone ring for two minutes without success, he glanced at his watch. Plenty of time before his lecture, and Oppsal was on the way. He turned off at Helsfyr.

  Beate had inherited her house from her mother, and it reminded Harry of the house in Oppsal where he had grown up: a typical 1950s timber house, the kind of sober box for a burgeoning middle class who thought apple orchards were no longer an upper-class preserve.

  Apart from the rumble of a dustcart working its way up the road from bin to bin, all was quiet. Everyone was at work, school, kindergarten. Harry parked the car, went through the gate, passed a child’s bike locked to the fence, a dustbin bulging with black bags, a swing, leapt up the steps to a pair of Nike trainers he recognised. Rang the bell under the ceramic sign bearing Beate’s name and her son’s.

  Waited.

  Rang again.

  On the first floor there was an open window to what he assumed had to be one of the bedrooms. He called her name. Perhaps she couldn’t hear because of the lorry’s steel piston loudly crushing and compacting rubbish as it came ever closer.

  He tried the door. Open. He entered. Called up to the first floor. No answer. And could no longer ignore the unease he knew had been there the whole time.

  From when the news didn’t come.

  From when she didn’t answer her mobile phone.

  He strode upstairs, went from room to room.

  Empty. Undisturbed.

  He ran back down the stairs and headed for the sitting room. Stood in the doorway and let his gaze wander. He knew exactly why he didn’t go right in, but didn’t want to think the thought aloud.

  Didn’t want to tell himself he was looking at a possible crime scene.

  He had been here before, but it struck him that the room seemed barer now. Perhaps it was the morning light, perhaps it was just that Beate wasn’t here. His gaze stopped at the table. A mobile phone.

  He heard himself breathe out and realised how much relief he felt. She had nipped down to the shop, left the phone, not even bothering to lock up. To the chemist for some aspirin or something. Yes, that’s what must have happened. Harry thought of the Nike trainers on the doorstep. So? A woman would have more than one pair of shoes. If he waited for a couple of minutes she would be back.

  Harry shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The sofa looked tempting, but still he didn’t go in. His gaze had fallen on the floor. There was a darker patch around the coffee table by the TV.

  She had obviously got rid of the rug.

  Recently.

  Harry felt his skin itch inside his shirt, as if he had just been rolling, naked and sweaty, in the grass. He crouched down. Smelt a faint aroma of ammonia from the parquet floor. Unless he was mistaken, wooden floors didn’t like ammonia. Harry stood up, straightened his back. Strode through the hall into the kitchen.

  Empty, tidy.

  Opened the tall cupboard beside the fridge. It was as though houses built in the 1950s had these unwritten rules about where to keep everything: food, tools, important documents and, in this case, cleaning equipment. At the bottom of the cupboard there was a bucket with a cloth neatly folded over the edge; on the first shelf were three dusting cloths, one sealed and one opened roll of white bin bags. A bottle of Krystal green soap. And a tin of Bona polish. He bent down and read the label.

  For parquet floors. Did not contain ammonia.

  Harry got up slowly. Stood quite still listening. Scenting the air.

  He was rusty, but he tried to absorb it and memorise everything he had seen. The first impression. He had emphasised it in his lectures again and again, how the first impressions at a crime scene were often the most important and correct, the collection of data while your senses were still on high alert, before they were blunted and counteracted by the forensics team’s dry facts.

  Harry closed his eyes, tried to hear what the house was telling him, which details he had overlooked, the one that would tell him what he wanted to know.

  But if the house was talking it was drowned by the noise of the dustcart outside the open front door. He heard the voices of the men on the lorry, the gate opening, the happy laughter. Carefree. As though nothing had happened. Perhaps nothing had happened. Perhaps Beate would soon be back, sniffling as she tightened her scarf around her neck, would brighten up, surprised but happy to see him. And even more surprised and happy when he asked her if she wanted to be a witness at his wedding to Rakel. Then she would laugh and blush to the roots as she did if anyone looked her way. The woman who used to immure herself in the House of Pain, the video room at Police HQ, where she would sit for twelve hours at a stretch and with infallible accuracy identify masked robbers caught on bank CCTV. Who became the head of Krimteknisk. A well-liked boss. Harry swallowed.

  It sounded like notes for a funeral speech.

  Pack it in, she’s on her way! He took a deep breath. Heard the gate slam, the dustcart start churning.

  Then it came to him. The detail. That didn’t tally.

  He stared into the cupboard. A half-used roll of white bin bags.

  The bags in the dustbin had been black.

  Harry was out of the blocks.

  Sprinted through the hall, out of the door, down towards the gate. Ran as fast as he could, yet his heart was running ahead of him.

  ‘Stop!’

  One dustman looked up. He was standing with one leg on the rear platform of the lorry, which had already started moving towards the next house. The crunch of the steel jaws as they chewed seemed to come from inside
Harry’s head.

  ‘Stop the butchery!’

  He jumped over the gate and landed on the tarmac with both feet. The dustman reacted at once, hit the red stop button and banged the side of the lorry, which pulled up with an angry snort.

  The crusher was quiet.

  The dustman stared.

  Harry walked slowly over to him, looking at the same place, the open iron jaws. There was a pungent stench, but Harry didn’t notice it. He saw only the half-crushed, split rubbish bags, leaking and seeping out liquid, and staining the metal red.

  ‘Folk are not right in the head,’ the dustman whispered.

  ‘What’s up?’ It was the driver; he had stuck his head out of the cab.

  ‘Looks like someone’s chucked their dog in again,’ his colleague shouted. And looked at Harry. ‘Is it yours?’

  Harry didn’t answer, just stepped up onto the platform and into the half-open hydraulic jaws.

  ‘Hey! You can’t do that! It’s danger-’

  Harry shook off the man’s hand. Slipped on the red mess, hitting his elbow and cheek on the slippery steel floor, noticed the familiar taste and smell of day-old blood. Struggled to his knees and tore open a bag.

  The contents poured out and slipped down the sloping flatbed.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ the dustman behind him gasped.

  Harry tore open a second. And a third.

  Heard the dustman jump off and puke, the splash on the tarmac.

  In the fourth bag Harry found what he was looking for. The other parts of her body could have belonged to anyone. But not this. Not this blonde hair, not this pale face that would never blush again. Not these vacant, staring eyes that had recognised everyone she had ever seen. The face had been hacked to pieces, but Harry was in no doubt. He put a finger on the earring forged from a uniform button.

  It was so painful, so, so painful that he couldn’t breathe, so painful that he was doubled up, like a dying bee with its sting removed.

  And he heard a sound cross his lips, as though from a stranger, a long, drawn-out howl that echoed around the quiet neighbourhood.

  PART FOUR

  27

  Beate Lønn was buried in Gamlebyen Cemetery, beside her father. He hadn’t been buried there because it was his parish but because the cemetery was the closest one to Police HQ.

  Mikael Bellman adjusted his tie. Held Ulla’s hand. It had been the PR consultant’s suggestion that she went along. The situation for him as the most senior officer had become so precarious after the latest killing that he needed help. The consultant had explained that it was important for him as Chief of Police to show more personal commitment, empathy, that so far he had appeared slightly too professional. Ulla had stepped up. Of course she had. Stunningly beautiful in the mourning outfit she had chosen with such meticulous care. She was a good wife to him. He would not forget it. Not for a long time.

  The priest went on and on about what he called the big questions, about what happens when we die. But of course they weren’t the big questions; those were what had happened before Beate died and who had killed her. Her and three other officers in the course of the last six months.

  They were the big questions for the press, who had spent recent days paying homage to the brilliant head of Krimteknisk and criticising the new and shockingly inexperienced Chief of Police.

  They were the big questions for Oslo Council, who had summoned him to a meeting where he would have to account for his handling of the murders. They had indicated that they would not pull their punches.

  And they were the big questions for the investigation groups, both the large one and the small one Hagen had set up without telling him, but which Bellman had now accepted, as at least it had found a concrete lead to work on, Valentin Gjertsen. Its weakness was that the theory that this ghost might be behind the murders was based on a single witness’s claim that she had seen him alive. And she was now in the coffin by the altar.

  In the reports from the forensics team, the police investigation and the pathologist, there hadn’t been enough detail to give a full picture of what had happened, but everything they did know matched the old reports of the murder in Bergslia.

  So if you assumed the rest was identical, Beate Lønn had died in the worst way imaginable.

  There wasn’t a trace of anaesthetic in any of the body parts they had examined. The pathologist’s report contained the phrases ‘massive internal bleeding in muscles and subcutaneous tissue’, ‘an inflammatory reaction to infection in the tissue’, which, translated, meant that Beate Lønn had been alive not only at the time the relevant parts of her body had been cut off, but unfortunately also some time afterwards.

  The severed surfaces suggested a bayonet saw rather than a jigsaw had been used for the carving up of the body. The forensics officers guessed a so-called bimetal blade had been used, that is, a fourteen-centimetre, fine-toothed blade that could cut through bone. Bjørn Holm said this was the one hunters where he came from called the elk blade.

  Beate Lønn might have been cut up on the coffee table as it was made of glass and could be cleaned effectively afterwards. The killer had probably taken ammonia with him and black bin bags as none of these had been found at the crime scene.

  In the dustcart they had also found the remains of a rug drenched in blood.

  What they didn’t find were fingerprints, footprints, fabric, hairs or other DNA material that didn’t belong to the house.

  Or any signs of a break-in.

  Katrine Bratt had explained that Beate Lønn had finished the call because the doorbell had rung.

  It seemed very unlikely that Beate Lønn would have voluntarily let in a stranger, and definitely not in the middle of an operation. So the theory they were working on was that the killer had forced his way in, threatening her with a weapon.

  And then, of course, there was the second theory. That it wasn’t a stranger. Because Beate Lønn had a chain on the solid door. And there were plenty of scratch marks, suggesting that it was used regularly.

  Bellman looked down the rows. Gunnar Hagen. Bjørn Holm and Katrine Bratt. An elderly lady with a small boy he assumed was Lønn’s son, at any rate the similarity was striking.

  Another ghost, Harry Hole. Rakel Fauke. Brunette, with these dark, glinting eyes, almost as beautiful as Ulla, incomprehensible that a guy like Hole could have got his paws on her.

  And a bit further back, Isabelle Skøyen. Oslo City Council had to be represented, of course, the press would make a point of it if not. Before they entered the church she had taken him aside, ignoring the fact that Ulla was there, and asked how long he was intending to avoid her phone calls. And he had repeated it was over. And she had regarded him in the way you regard an insect before you tread on it and said she was a leaver, not a leavee. Which he would soon find out. He had felt her eyes on his back as he had walked over to Ulla and offered her his arm.

  Otherwise the rows were filled with what he assumed was a mixture of relatives, friends and colleagues, most of them in uniform. He had overheard them consoling one another as best they could: there were no signs of torture and loss of blood had hopefully meant she would have been unconscious in no time.

  For a fraction of a second his eyes met someone else’s. And moved on as if he hadn’t seen him. Truls Berntsen. What the hell was he doing here? He hadn’t exactly been on Beate Lønn’s Christmas card list. Ulla pressed his hand lightly, looked at him enquiringly, and he flashed her a quick smile. Fair enough; in death we are all colleagues, he supposed.

  Katrine had been wrong. She wasn’t all cried out.

  A few times since Beate had been found she had thought there were no tears left. But there were. And she had squeezed them out of a body that was already sore from long bouts of weeping.

  She had cried until her body refused and she had thrown up. Cried until she fell asleep from pure exhaustion. And cried from the moment she awoke. And she was crying again now.

  And in the hours she slept she was plag
ued by nightmares, haunted by her own devilish pact. The one where she was willing to sacrifice a colleague in return for the arrest of Valentin. The one she had ratified with her incantation: one more time, you bastard. Strike one more time.

  Katrine sobbed aloud.

  The loud sob jolted Truls Berntsen upright. He had been falling asleep. The cheap suit was so damned slippery on the worn church pew there was a good chance he would slide right off.

  He fixed his eyes on the altarpiece. Jesus with rays of sun coming out of his head. A headlight. Forgiveness of sins. It was a stroke of genius what they had done. Religion hadn’t been selling so well; it was so hard to obey all the commandments once you had the money to succumb to more temptations. So they had come up with this idea that was good enough to believe. A sales idea that did as much for turnover as credit, it almost felt like redemption was free. But, just like with credit, things got out of control, people didn’t care, they sinned for their dear lives, because all you had to do was believe. So around the Middle Ages they had to tighten up, implement debt collection. So they thought up hell and the stuff about the soul burning. And hey presto — you frightened the punters back into the church and this time they settled their accounts. The church became very wealthy, and good for them, they had done such a fantastic job. That was Truls’s genuine opinion on the matter. Even though he believed he would die and that would be that, no forgiveness of sins, no hell. But if he was mistaken, he was in deep trouble, that much was obvious. There had to be limits to what you could forgive, and Jesus would hardly have the imagination to conjure up a couple of the things Truls had done.

  Harry was staring straight ahead. Was somewhere else. In the House of Pain with Beate pointing and explaining. He didn’t come to until he heard Rakel’s whisper.

  ‘You have to help Gunnar and the others, Harry.’

  He recoiled. Looked at her in surprise.

  She nodded to the altar where the others had already taken up positions by the coffin. Gunnar Hagen, Bjørn Holm, Katrine Bratt, Ståle Aune and Jack Halvorsen’s brother. Hagen had said Harry had to carry the coffin alongside the brother-in-law, who was the second tallest.