by Jo Nesbo
'Occurred to me?' Harry groaned. 'Nothing sensible has occurred to me since this shit started, 0ystein. Sorry, I'm freaking out here. It's all so simple and obvious. That was why I didn't find my phone at Anna's. And that's why he's laughing.'
'Apologies for ruining your day.'
'Hang on a moment,' Harry said, suddenly in high spirits. 'If we can prove he has my phone, we can also prove he was at Anna's after I left!'
'Yippee!' screeched the receiver. And then a more cautious: 'If it means you're happy, anyway? Hello? Harry?' 'I'm still here. I'm thinking.'
'It's good to think. You keep thinking. I've got a date with Stella. Well, several actually. And if I'm going to make the Oslo flight . . .' 'All the best, 0ystein.'
Harry stood with the receiver in his hand, weighing up whether to hurl it into the mirror or not. When he woke up next day, he hoped he had dreamed the conversation with 0ystein. In fact he had. Six or seven versions of it.
Raskol sat with his head bowed, resting on his hands, as Harry talked. He neither moved nor interrupted while Harry described how they had found Lev Grette and how his own mobile phone was the reason they still had no evidence against Anna's murderer. When Harry had finished, Raskol folded his hands and slowly raised his head: 'You've solved your case then, but mine remains unresolved.'
'I don't see them as your case and mine, Raskol. My responsibility—'
'I do, though, Spiuni, Raskol cut in. 'I run a military organisation.'
'Mm. What exactly do you mean by that?'
Raskol closed his eyes. 'Have I told you about the time King Wu invited Sun Tzu to teach the ladies of the court the arts of war, Spiuni?’
'Well, no.'
Raskol smiled. 'Sun Tzu was an intellectual and he began by precisely and pedagogically explaining marching instructions to the women. When the drums rolled, they didn't march, they just giggled and laughed. 'It's the general's fault if the commands are not understood,' Sun Tzu said and explained once more. But the same happened when he gave the order to march. 'It's the officer's fault if an order is understood but not obeyed,' he said and ordered two of his men to pick out two of the leaders of the courtesans. They were lined up and beheaded in front of the other terrified women. When the king heard that his two favourite concubines had been executed, he fell ill and had to take to his bed for several days. When he got up again, he put Sun Tzu in control of his armed forces.' Raskol opened his eyes again. 'What does this story teach us, Spiuni?’
Harry didn't answer.
'Well, it teaches us that in a military organisation the logic has to be total and absolutely consistent. If you relax your demands, you're left with a court of giggling concubines. When you came to ask for another 40,000 kroner, you got it because I believed the story of the photograph in Anna's shoe. Because Anna is a gypsy. When we gypsies travel, we leave a patrin at forks in the road. A red scarf tied around a branch, a chipped bone, they all have different meanings. A photograph means someone has died. Or will die. You weren't to know, so I trusted what you said.' Raskol placed his hands on the table, palms upwards. 'But the man who took the life of my brother's daughter is free and when I look at you now I see a giggling concubine, Spiuni. Absolute consistency. Give me his name, Spiuni.'
Harry breathed in. Two words. Four syllables. If he revealed Albu's name, what sentence would be passed on Albu? Premeditated murder motivated by jealousy. Nine years, out after six? And the consequences for Harry? The investigation would inevitably uncover the fact that he, a policeman, had concealed the truth to prevent the finger of suspicion pointing at him. Shot himself in the foot. Two words, four syllables. All Harry's problems would be solved. Albu would be the one to face the final consequence. Harry's answer was one syllable.
Raskol nodded and regarded Harry with sad eyes. 'I was afraid you would say that. You don't give me any choice then, Spiuni. Do you remember what I answered when you asked me why I trusted you?'
Harry nodded.
'Everyone has something they live for. Isn't that true, Spiuni? Something which can be taken from them. Well, does room 316 ring any bells?'
Harry didn't answer.
'Let me tell you then. Three one six is the number of a room in the International Hotel in Moscow. Olga is on watch on that floor. She'll soon be retired and would like a nice, long holiday by the Black Sea. There are three stairways and a lift to the floor. As well as the staff lift. The room has twin beds.'
Harry gulped.
Raskol rested his forehead on his folded hands: 'The little one sleeps nearest the window.'
Harry got up, went to the door and hit it hard. He could hear the echo resounding down the corridor outside. He continued to beat the door until he heard the key in the lock.
30
Vibrate Mode
'Sorry, but I came as quickly as I could,' Oystein said, driving his taxi off the pavement outside Elmer's Fruit&Tobacco shop.
'Welcome back,' Harry said, wondering whether the bus coming from the right had realised that 0ystein had no intention of stopping.
'We're going to Slemdal, aren't we?' 0ystein ignored the furious hooting from the bus.
'Bjornetrakket. You know you have to give way here?' 'Decided not to.'
Harry looked across at his pal. He could just discern two bloodshot eyes behind the narrow slits.
'Tired?'
'Jet lag.'
'The time difference between here and Egypt is one hour, 0ystein.' 'At least.'
Since neither the shock absorbers nor the springs in his seat worked any more, Harry felt every cobbled stone and change of level in the road as they careered through the bends on their way up to
Albu's house, but right now nothing interested him less. He borrowed Oystein's mobile phone, rang the International Hotel and room 316. Oleg answered. Harry could hear the pleasure in his voice when Oleg asked him where he was.
'In a car. Where's your mum?'
'Out.'
'I didn't think she had to go to court until tomorrow.'
'All the solicitors are meeting in Kuznetski Most,' he said in an adult voice. 'She'll be back in an hour.'
'Listen, Oleg, can you give your mum a message. Tell her to change hotel. Immediately.'
'Why?'
'Because . . . I said so. Just tell her, OK? I'll ring again later.'
'Alright.'
'Good boy. I've got to go.' 'You . . .'
'What?'
'Nothing.'
'OK. Don't forget to tell your mum what I told you.'
0ystein braked and pulled onto the pavement.
'Wait here,' Harry said and jumped out. 'If I'm not back in twenty minutes, ring the ops room, the number I gave you. Tell them—'
'Inspector Hole from Crime Squad wants a patrol car with armed officers here right away. I got it, Harry.'
'Good. If you hear shots, ring immediately.' 'Right. Which film is this again?'
Harry looked up at the house. No barking to be heard. A dark blue BMW drove slowly past them and parked further down the street. Otherwise everything was quiet.
'Most of them,' Harry breathed.
0ystein grinned. 'Cool.' Then a wrinkle of concern appeared between his eyes. 'It is cool, isn't it? Not just insanely dangerous?'
Vigdis Albu opened the door. She was wearing a freshly ironed white blouse and a short skirt, but her blurred eyes seemed to have come straight from bed.
'I rang your husband's workplace,' Harry said. 'They told me he was at home today.'
'Could be,' she said. 'He doesn't live here any more, Inspector. You were the one who dragged up this whole business with . . . with . . .' She gesticulated as if she were looking for the right word, but with a smile of distaste she resigned herself to admitting there was no other word for it: '. . . the whore.'
'May I come in, fru Albu?'
She hunched her shoulders, and shuddered to register her disgust. 'Call me Vigdis or anything, but not that.'
'Vigdis.' Harry stooped. 'May I come in now?'
>
The thin plucked eyebrows angled. She hesitated. Then she thrust out her hand. 'Why not?'
Harry thought he could detect a faint smell of gin, but it might have been her perfume. Nothing in the house suggested anything out of the ordinary - it was clean, fragrant and tidy. There were fresh flowers in a vase on the sideboard. Harry noticed the sofa cover was a touch whiter than the off-white he had sat on last time. Low classical music was playing from speakers he couldn't see.
'Mahler?' Harry asked.
'Greatest hits,' Vigdis said. 'Arne only bought collections. He always said everything except the best was worthless.'
'Nice that he didn't take the collections with him then. Where is he, by the way?'
'First of all, he doesn't own anything you can see here. And I neither know nor wish to know where he is. Have you got a cigarette, Inspector?'
Harry passed her the packet and watched her fumbling with a large teak-and-silver table lighter. He leaned over the table with his disposable version.
'Thank you. He's abroad, I would guess. Somewhere hot. Not as hot as I would like it to be, I'm afraid.'
'Mm. What do you mean he doesn't own anything here?'
'Exactly what I say. The house, the furnishings, the car - it's all mine.' She blew out the smoke with force. 'Ask my solicitor.'
'I thought your husband had the money for—'
'Don't call him that!' Vigdis seemed to be trying to suck all the tobacco out of the cigarette. 'Yes, Arne had money. He had enough to buy this house, the furniture, the cars, the suits, the chalet and the jewellery he gave me for no other reason than to show off in front of all the so-called friends. The only thing that had any meaning for Arne was what others thought of him, you see. His family, my family, colleagues, neighbours and student friends.' The anger gave her voice a harsh metallic timbre as though she were talking through a mega-phone. 'Everyone was a spectator to Arne Albu's fantastic life. They were meant to applaud when things were going well. If Arne had put as much energy into running the company as he did reaping plaudits, perhaps Albu AS would not have gone downhill the way it did.'
'According to Dagens Neeringsliv Albu AS was a successful enterprise.'
'Albu AS was a family business, not a stock-exchange-listed com-pany which has to publish details of its accounts. Arne made it look profitable by selling off its assets.' She crushed the half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray. 'A couple of years ago the company had an acute liquidity crisis and since Arne was personally responsible for the debt, he put the house and all our other possessions in my name and the children's.'
'Yes, but the buyers paid a tidy sum. Thirty million, the papers said.'
Vigdis gave a bitter laugh. 'So you swallowed the story of the successful businessman stepping down to spend more time with his family, did you? Arne's good at PR, I'll give him that. Let me put it this way - Arne had the choice of losing the business or going bust. Naturally, he chose the former.'
'And the thirty million?'
'Arne can put on the charm when he wants to. And people fall for it. That's why he's good at negotiating, especially in pressurised situations. That was what made the bank and the supplier keep the business alive for as long as they did. Arne negotiated two clauses in the contract with the supplier in what ought to have been an unconditional capitulation. He would be allowed to keep the chalet, which was still in his name, and he got the buyer to put the purchase figure at thirty million. That didn't mean much to them as they could write the whole sum off with the debts of Albu AS. He made a bankruptcy look like a sales coup. And that's not such a mean feat, is it.'
She threw back her head and laughed. Harry could see the little scar under the chin left by a facelift.
'What about Anna Bethsen?' he asked.
'His tart?' She crossed her slim legs, flicked her hair away from her face with a finger and stared into space with an air of indifference. 'She was just a toy. His big mistake was his keenness to show off to the boys about his authentic gypsy lover. Not everyone Arne regarded as friends felt they owed him any particular loyalty, shall we say. In short, it came to my ears.'
'And?'
'I gave him another chance. For the children's sake. I'm a reason-able woman.' She looked at Harry through heavy eyelids. 'But he didn't take it.'
'Perhaps he discovered she was more than a toy?'
She didn't answer, but the thin lips became even thinner.
'Did he have a study or anything like that?' Harry asked.
Vigdis Albu nodded.
She led the way up the stairs. 'He used to lock himself in and sit up here half the night.' She opened the door to an attic room with a view of neighbouring roofs.
'Working?'
Surfing the Net. He was utterly hooked. Said he looked at cars, but God knows what he did.'
Harry went to the desk and pulled out one of the drawers. 'Emptied?'
'He took everything he had here with him. It filled one plastic bag.' 'The computer too?' 'It was a laptop.'
'Which he attached to a mobile phone?'
She raised an eyebrow. 'I don't know anything about that.'
'I just wondered.'
'Anything else you want to see?'
Harry turned round. Vigdis was leaning against the door frame with one arm over her head and the other on her hip. The feeling of deja vu was overwhelming.
'I have one last question, fru . . . Vigdis.'
'Oh, are you in a rush, Inspector?'
'The clock's running on a taxi outside. The question is simple. Do you think he could have killed her?'
She studied Harry in her own time as she lightly kicked at the door sill with the heel of her shoe. Harry waited.
'Do you know the first thing he said when I told him about his whore? Promise me you won't tell anyone, Vigdis. I shouldn't tell anyone! For Arne the notion that others considered us happy was more important than whether we really were. My answer, Inspector, is that I have no idea what he is capable of. I don't know the man.'
Harry took a card out of his inside pocket. 'I'd like you to give me a call if he contacts you or if you find out where he is. Immediately.'
Vigdis looked at his card with a tiny smile playing around her pale pink lips. 'Only then, Inspector?'
Harry didn't answer.
On the stairs outside he turned to her. 'Did you tell anyone?' 'That my husband was unfaithful? What do you think?' 'I think you're a practical woman.' She beamed.
'Eighteen minutes,' 0ystein said. 'Shit, my pulse was beginning to race.'
'Did you ring my old mobile number while I was in there?'
'Of course. It just rang and rang.'
'I didn't hear a thing. It's not there any more.'
'Sorry, but have you heard about vibrate?'
'What?'
0ystein simulated an epileptic fit. 'Like that. Vibrate mode. Silent phone.'
'Mine cost one krone and just rang. He's taken it with him, Oystein. What happened to the blue BMW down the street?'
'Eh?'
Harry sighed. 'Let's get going.'
31
Maglite
'Are you telling me some psycho is after us because you can't find the person who killed a member of his family?' Rakel's voice screeched down the phone.
Harry closed his eyes. Halvorsen had gone to Elmer's and he had the office to himself. 'In a nutshell, yes. I've come to an agreement with him. He's kept his part.'
'And that's why we're being hunted? That's why I have to leave the hotel with my son, who in a few days' time will find out whether he's allowed to stay with his mother or not? That's . . . that's . . .' Her voice rose into a furious, intermittent falsetto. He let her go on without interrupting. 'Why, Harry?'
'The oldest reason in the world,' he said. 'Blood revenge. Vendetta.'
'What's it got to do with us?'
'As I said: nothing. You and Oleg are not the end, only the means. This man sees it as his duty to avenge the killing.'
'Duty?' Her scream pi
erced Harry's eardrum. 'Vengeance is one of these territorial things you men like so much. It's not about duty, it's the Neanderthal urge!'
He waited until he thought she was finished. 'I'm sorry about this, but there's nothing I can do right now.' She didn't answer. 'Rakel?' 'Yes.'
'Where are you?'
'If what you say is right, about how easily they found us, I'm not sure I'll risk telling you on the phone.' 'OK. Are you somewhere safe?' 'I think so.' 'Good.'
A Russian voice faded in and out, like on a short-wave radio station.
