by Jo Nesbo
‘Speaking of coverage, can you confirm that the vampirist is probably responsible for the disappearance of a female member of staff from Schrøder’s Restaurant last night?’
‘Confirm? Me?’
‘Yes, you work for the police now, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I suppose so, but I’m not in a position to say anything at all.’
‘Because you don’t know or because you can’t say?’
‘Both, perhaps. If I were to say something, it would have to be something general. As an expert on vampirism, in other words.’
‘Great! Because I’ve got a podcast—’
‘A what?’
‘Radio. VG has its own radio station.’
‘Oh, OK.’
‘Could we invite you in to talk about the vampirist? In general terms, of course.’
Hallstein Smith thought about it. ‘I’d have to get permission from the lead detective.’
‘Good, I’ll wait to hear from you. On a different subject, Smith. I wrote that piece about you. Which I assume you were happy with. Seeing as it did indirectly get you to the centre of the action.’
‘Yes. Sure.’
‘In return, could you tell me who at Police HQ lured me out to the container terminal yesterday?’
‘Lured you to do what?’
‘Never mind. Have a good day.’
Hallstein Smith was left staring at his phone. Container terminal? What was she talking about?
Truls Berntsen let his eyes roam across the rows of pictures of Megan Fox on his computer. It was almost frightening, the way she’d let herself go. Was it just the pictures or the fact that she’d turned thirty? Or knowing what childbirth must have done to the body that had defined perfection in the 2007 film Transformers? Or was it the fact that he himself had lost eight kilos of fat in the past two years, replacing them with four kilos of muscle and nine women fucked? Had that made his distant dreams of Megan Fox that bit less distant? The way one light year is less than two. Or was it simply the fact that in ten hours’ time he would be sitting with Ulla Bellman, the only woman he had ever lusted after more than Megan Fox?
He heard someone clear their throat and looked up.
Katrine Bratt was standing there, leaning against the partition.
After Wyller had moved down to that laughable boys’ club in the boiler room, Truls had been able to immerse himself fully in The Shield. He had now seen all the available seasons, and hoped Katrine Bratt wasn’t about to do anything that spoiled his free time.
‘Bellman wants to see you,’ she said.
‘OK.’ Truls switched his computer off, stood up and walked past Katrine Bratt. So close that he would have smelt her perfume if she had been wearing any. He thought all women really ought to use a bit of perfume. Not as much as the ones who overdid it, the ones who suffered solvent damage, but a bit. Enough to set his imagination going about how they really smelt.
While he waited for the lift he had time to wonder what Mikael wanted. But his mind was blank.
It wasn’t until he was standing in the Police Chief’s office that he realised he’d been found out. When he saw Mikael’s back over at the window, and heard him say, with no introduction: ‘You’ve let me down, Truls. Did the bitch approach you, or was it the other way round?’
It was like having a bucket of cold water tipped over him. What the hell had happened? Had Ulla broken down and confessed in a fit of guilty conscience? Or had Mikael pressurised her? And what the hell was he supposed to say now?
He cleared his throat. ‘She came to me, Mikael. She was the one who wanted it.’
‘Of course the bitch wanted it, they take whatever they can get. But the fact that she got it from you, my closest confidant, after all we’ve been through.’
Truls almost couldn’t believe that he was talking that way about his wife, the mother of his children.
‘I didn’t think I could say no to meeting up and having a chat, it wasn’t supposed to go any further.’
‘But it did, didn’t it?’
‘Nothing’s happened at all.’
‘Nothing at all? Do you not understand that you’ve told the murderer what we know and don’t know? How much did she pay?’
Truls blinked. ‘Pay?’ The penny dropped.
‘I’m assuming Mona Daa didn’t get the information for free? Tell me, and don’t forget that I know you, Truls.’
Truls Berntsen grinned. He was off the hook. And repeated: ‘Nothing’s happened at all.’
Mikael turned round, slammed his hand down on the desk and snarled: ‘Do you think we’re idiots?’
Truls studied the way the patches on Mikael’s face switched between white and red, as if the blood was sloshing back and forth inside. The patches had grown bigger over the years, like a snake shedding its skin.
‘Let’s hear what you think you know,’ Truls said, and sat down without asking.
Mikael looked at him in surprise. Then he sat down on his own chair. Because perhaps he had seen it in Truls’s eyes. That he wasn’t frightened. That if Truls was thrown overboard, he’d take Bellman with him. All the way down.
‘What I know,’ Mikael said, ‘is that Katrine Bratt showed up in my office early this morning to tell me that because I’d asked her to keep a close eye on you, she’d asked one of her detectives to keep you under surveillance. You were evidently already suspected of being the source of the leaks, Truls.’
‘Who was the detective?’
‘She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.’
Of course not, Truls thought. In case you find yourself in a tricky situation, where it would be useful to be able to deny all knowledge. Truls might not be the smartest guy in the world, but he wasn’t as stupid as those around him thought, and he had gradually started to work out how Mikael and the others up at the top of the hierarchy reasoned.
‘Bratt’s detective was proactive,’ Mikael said. ‘He discovered that you’d been in telephone contact with Mona Daa at least twice in the past week.’
A detective checking phone calls, Truls thought. Who had been in touch with telecoms companies. Anders Wyller. Little Truls wasn’t stupid. Oh no.
‘To confirm that you were Mona Daa’s source, he called her. He pretended to be the vampirist, and to prove it he asked her to call her source to check a detail that only the perpetrator and the police could know.’
‘The smoothie mixer.’
‘So you admit it?’
‘That Mona Daa called me, yes.’
‘Good. Because the detective woke Katrine Bratt last night to say he had a list of calls from the telecom company showing that Mona Daa called you right after he made his hoax call to her. This is going to be very hard to explain away, Truls.’
Truls shrugged. ‘There’s nothing to explain. Mona Daa called me, asked about a smoothie mixer, and naturally I refused to comment and referred her to the lead detective. The conversation lasted ten, maybe twenty seconds, as the list of calls no doubt confirms. Maybe Mona Daa already suspected that it was a bluff to try to uncover her source. So she called me instead of her source.’
‘According to the detective, she later went to the agreed location out in the container terminal to meet the vampirist. The detective even photographed the whole thing. So someone must have given her confirmation about the smoothie maker.’
‘Perhaps Mona Daa arranged to meet first, and then went to her source and got confirmation face-to-face. Police officers and journalists both know how easy it is to get hold of information showing who called who, and when.’
‘Speaking of which, you had two other telephone conversations with Mona Daa, one of which lasted several minutes.’
‘Check the list. Mona Daa called me, I’ve never called her. The fact that it takes a pit bull like Daa several minutes of banging on before she realises that she’s not going to get anything, and that she still tries again later to lance the boil, is her problem. I have quite a bit of time during the day.’
Truls
leaned back in his chair. Folded his hands and looked at Mikael, who was sitting there nodding as if he was absorbing what Truls had said, thinking through possible holes that they might have missed. A little smile, a degree of warmth in those brown eyes, seemed to indicate that he had come to the conclusion that this might work, that they might be able to get Truls off the hook.
‘Good,’ Mikael said. ‘But now that it turns out you aren’t the leak, Truls, who could it be?’
Truls pouted his lips, the way his slightly plump French online date had taught him to do every time she asked him the complicated question ‘When are we going to meet again?’
‘You tell me. No one wants to be seen talking to a journalist like Daa in a case like this. No, the only person I’ve seen doing that is Wyller. Hang on – unless I’m remembering wrong, he gave her a number she could call him on. Actually, yes, she told him where he could get hold of her too, at that gym, Gain.’
Mikael Bellman looked at Truls. With a surprised little smile, like someone discovering after many years that their spouse can sing, has blue blood or a university degree.
‘So what you’re implying, Truls, is that our leak is probably someone who’s new here.’ Bellman stroked his chin thoughtfully with his forefinger and thumb. ‘A natural assumption seeing as the problem of the leak has only recently emerged, one which doesn’t – what’s the word I’m looking for? – reflect the culture we’ve nurtured within the Oslo Police in recent years. But I don’t suppose we shall ever know who it is or isn’t, seeing as the journalist is legally obliged to protect the identity of her source.’
Truls laughed his grunting laugh. ‘Good, Mikael.’
Mikael nodded. Leaned forward and, before Truls had time to react, grabbed him by the shirt collar and pulled him towards him.
‘How much did the bitch pay you, Beavis?’
22
TUESDAY AFTERNOON
MEHMET PULLED THE bathrobe tighter around him. He stared at the screen of his phone and pretended not to see the men coming and going in the rudimentary changing room. The entrance fee to the Cagaloglu Hamam gave no time limit on how long you could spend in the baths. But obviously, if a man were to sit in a changing room for hours looking at other naked men, there was a risk he might become unpopular. That’s why he kept moving about at regular intervals, between the sauna and the perpetually fog-clouded steam room as well as the pools of varying temperatures, from steaming hot to cold. And there was a practical reason, too: the rooms were connected by a number of doors, so he risked not seeing everyone if he didn’t move around. But right now the changing room was so cold that he wanted to get back into the warm. Mehmet looked at the time. Four o’clock. The Turkish tattooist thought he had seen the man with the demon tattoo at the baths early in the afternoon, and there probably wasn’t anything to say that serial killers couldn’t be creatures of habit too.
Harry Hole had explained that Mehmet was the perfect spy. Firstly, he was one of only two people who stood any chance of recognising Valentin Gjertsen’s face. Secondly, as a Turk he wouldn’t stand out in a bathhouse that was mostly frequented by his compatriots. Thirdly, because Valentin, according to Harry, would have spotted a police officer instantly. Besides, they had a mole at Crime Squad who was leaking everything to VG and God knows who else. So Harry and Mehmet were the only two people who knew about this operation. But the moment Mehmet let Harry know he had seen Valentin, it would take less than fifteen minutes before he was on the scene with armed police officers.
And in return, Harry had promised Mehmet that Øystein Eikeland was the perfect stand-in at the Jealousy Bar. A guy who had looked like an old scarecrow when he walked through the door, with the smell of a hard but enjoyable hippie lifestyle clinging to his shabby denim clothes. And when Mehmet asked if he’d stood behind a bar before, Eikeland had stuck a roll-up between his lips and sighed: ‘I’ve spent years in bars, lad. Standing, kneeling and lying down. Never on that side of the counter, though.’
But Eikeland was Harry’s trusted choice, so he just had to hope that nothing too bad happened. A week at most, Harry had said. Then he could go back to his bar. Harry had performed a little bow when he was given the key, on a key ring with a broken plastic heart, the logo of the Jealousy Bar, and told Mehmet that they needed to discuss the music. That there were people over thirty who don’t get dandruff from new music, and that there was even hope for someone bogged down in the Bad Company swamp. The thought of that discussion alone was worth at least a week of tedium, Mehmet thought as he scrolled down VG’s website, even though he must have read the same headlines ten times now.
FAMOUS VAMPIRISTS IN HISTORY. And while he stared at the screen and waited for the rest of the article to load, something odd happened. It was as if he couldn’t breathe for a moment. He looked up. The door to the baths swung shut. He looked around. The other three men in the changing room were the same ones as before. Someone had entered and walked through the room. Mehmet locked his phone in his locker, got up and followed.
The boilers in the next room were rumbling. Harry looked at the time. Five past four. He pushed his chair back, folded his hands behind his head and leaned against the brick wall. Smith, Bjørn and Wyller looked at him.
‘It’s been sixteen hours since Marte Ruud went missing,’ Harry said. ‘Anything new?’
‘Hair,’ Bjørn Holm said. ‘The team at the scene found strands of hair by the main entrance at Schrøder’s. They look like they could be a match for the hairs we got from Valentin Gjertsen off the handcuffs. They’ve been sent for analysis. Hair suggests a struggle, and also that he didn’t clean up after himself this time. And that also means that there couldn’t have been too much blood, so there’s reason to hope that she was alive when they left.’
‘OK,’ Smith said. ‘There’s a chance she’s alive, and that he’s using her as a cow.’
‘Cow?’ Wyller asked.
The boiler room fell silent. Harry grimaced. ‘You mean he … he’s milking her?’
‘The body takes twenty-four hours to reproduce one per cent of the body’s red blood cells,’ Smith said. ‘At best, it might quench his thirst for blood for a while. At worst, it might mean that he’s even more focused on regaining power and control. And that he’s going to try again to find the people who’ve humiliated him. Which means you and yours, Harry.’
‘My wife is under police guard, round the clock, and I’ve left a message for my son telling him to be careful.’
‘So it’s possible that he might attack men as well?’ Wyller asked.
‘Absolutely,’ Smith said.
Harry felt his trouser pocket vibrate. He pulled out his phone. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s Øystein. How do you make a daiquiri? I’ve got a difficult customer and Mehmet isn’t answering.’
‘How should I know? Doesn’t the customer know?’
‘No.’
‘Something to do with rum and lime. Ever heard of Google?’
‘Of course, I’m not an idiot. That’s on the Internet, isn’t it?’
‘Try it, you might like it. I’m hanging up now.’ Harry ended the call. ‘Sorry. Anything else?’
‘Witness statements from people in the vicinity of Schrøder’s,’ Wyller said. ‘No one saw or heard anything. Odd, on such a busy street.’
‘It can be pretty deserted there around midnight on a Monday night,’ Harry said. ‘But getting someone, conscious or unconscious, away from there without being seen? Hardly. He might have been parked right outside.’
‘There’s no vehicle registered to Valentin Gjertsen, and no vehicle was leased under that name yesterday,’ Wyller said.
Harry spun towards him.
Wyller looked back quizzically. ‘I know the chances of him using his real name are pretty much zero, but I checked anyway. Isn’t that …?’
‘Yeah, that’s absolutely fine,’ Harry said. ‘Send the photofit picture to the car-rental companies. And there’s a twenty-four-hour Deli de Luca next to Schr
øder’s—’
‘I was at the morning meeting of the investigative team and they’ve checked the security cameras there,’ Bjørn said. ‘Nothing.’
‘OK, anything else I should know about?’
‘They’re working in the USA to get access to the victims’ IP addresses on Facebook using a subpoena rather than going via a court,’ Wyller said. ‘That means we wouldn’t get the contents, but all the addresses of people they’ve sent and received messages to and from. It could be a matter of weeks rather than months.’
Mehmet was standing outside the door of the hararet. He had seen the door close as he emerged into the baths from the changing room. And it was in the hararet that the man with the tattoo had been seen. Mehmet knew it wasn’t very likely that Valentin would show up as soon as this, on the first day. Unless he came several times a week, of course. So why stand there hesitating?
Mehmet swallowed.
Then he pulled the door of the hararet open and went inside. The thick steam moved, swirled around, disappeared out through the door, opening a corridor into the room. And for a moment Mehmet found himself staring at the face of a man sitting on the second bench up. Then the corridor closed again and the face was gone. But Mehmet had seen enough.
It was him. The man who had come into the bar that evening.
Should he run out straight away or sit down for a while first? After all, the man had seen Mehmet staring at him, and if he walked out at once surely he’d get suspicious?
Mehmet stood where he was by the door.
It felt like the steam he was breathing in was making his airways tighter. He couldn’t wait any longer, he had to get out. Mehmet nudged the door gently and slipped out. Ran across the slippery tiles with short, careful steps so as not to fall, and reached the changing room. He swore as he struggled with the code on his padlock. Four digits. 1683. The Battle of Vienna. The year when the Ottoman Empire ruled the world, or at least the part of the world that was worth ruling. When the empire couldn’t expand any further, and the decline began. Defeat after defeat. Was that why he had picked that year, because it somehow reflected his own story, a story of having everything and losing it? Eventually he managed to open the lock. He grabbed his phone, tapped at it and held it to his ear. Stared at the door to the baths, which had swung shut again, every moment expecting the man to come rushing in and attack him.
