by Jo Nesbo
'Why can't you reassure me that we're not in any danger, Harry? Tell me it's your imagination, they're bluffing . . .' Her voice had become frayed at the edges. '. . . anything . . .'
Harry took his time to answer. Then he said in a slow, clear voice: 'You need to be frightened, Rakel. Frightened enough to do the right thing.'
'And that is?'
Harry took a deep breath. 'I'll straighten things out. I promise you. I'll straighten things out.'
Harry called Vigdis once Rakel had hung up. She answered after the first ring.
'Hole here. Are you sitting by the phone waiting for someone, fru
Albu?'
'What do you think?' Harry could tell by the slurred speech that she had had at least a couple of drinks since he left.
'I've no idea, but I'd like you to report your husband missing.'
'Why? I don't miss him.' She gave a short, sad laugh.
'Well, I need a reason for setting the search machinery in motion. You can choose. Either you report him missing or I announce he's being investigated. For murder.'
A long silence followed. 'I don't understand, Constable.'
'There's not a lot to understand, fru Albu. Shall I say you've reported him missing?'
'Wait!' she shouted. Harry could hear a glass being smashed at the other end. 'What are you talking about? Arne is already being investigated.'
'By me, yes, but I haven't informed anyone yet.'
'Oh? And what about the three officers who came here after you
left?'
Harry could feel a cold finger running up his spine. 'Three officers?'
'Don't you communicate in the police force? They wouldn't go. I was almost frightened.'
Harry had got out of his office chair. 'Did they arrive in a blue BMW, fru Albu?'
'Do you remember what I told you about the fru stuff, Harry?'
'What did you tell them?'
'Not much. Nothing I didn't tell you, I don't think. They had a look at some photos and . . . well, they weren't exactly impolite,
but... '
'How did you get them to leave?' 'Leave?'
'They wouldn't have left unless they found what they were after. Believe me, fru Albu.'
'Harry, now I'm getting tired of reminding—' 'Think! This is important.'
'My God, I didn't say anything, I'm telling you. I . . . yes, I played a recorded message Arne left on the answerphone two days ago. Then they left.'
'You said you hadn't talked to him.'
'I haven't. He just said he'd picked up Gregor. And that was true. I could hear Gregor barking in the background.' 'Where was he ringing from? 'How should I know?'
'At any rate, your visitors knew. This is a matter of . . .' Harry tried to think of another way of saying it, but gave up: '. . . life or death.'
There was a lot Harry didn't know about roads and communication. He didn't know that calculations had shown that the building of two tunnels in Vinterbro and the extension of the motorway would reduce rush-hour congestion on the E6 south of Oslo. He didn't know that the crucial argument in favour of this billion-kroner investment had not been the voters who commuted between Moss and Drobak, but traffic safety. The road authorities used a formula to calculate the social benefit, based on an evaluation of one human life at 20.4 million kroner, which included ambulances, re-routing of traffic and future loss of tax income. Heading south on the E6 in Oystein's Mercedes, bumper to bumper, Harry didn't even know what value he placed on Arne Albu's life. He certainly didn't know what could be gained by saving it. All he knew was that he couldn't afford to lose what he risked losing. Not under any circumstances. So it didn't do to think too much.
The recorded message Vigdis Albu had played him over the telephone had lasted five seconds and contained only one valuable piece of information. It was enough. There was nothing in the ten short words Arne Albu said before ringing off: I took Gregor with me. Just so that you know.
It wasn't Gregor's frenetic barking in the background.
It was the cold screams. The seagulls.
It was dark when the sign for the Larkollen turn-off appeared.
Outside the chalet was a Jeep Cherokee, but Harry continued up to the turnaround. No blue BMW there. He parked immediately beneath the chalet. There was no point trying to sneak in; he had already heard the barking when he rolled down the window on the way in.
Harry was conscious that he should have taken a gun with him.
Not that there was any reason to assume Arne Albu was armed; he couldn't know that someone craved his life - or to be more precise, his death. But they weren't the only actors in this drama any more.
Harry got out of the car. He couldn't see or hear any gulls now -perhaps they only make noises in daylight, he mused.
Gregor was chained to the railing by the front steps. His teeth glittered in the moonlight, sending cold shivers down Harry's still-sore neck, but he forced himself to approach the baying dog with long, slow strides.
'Do you remember me?' Harry whispered when he was so close he could touch the dog's grey breath. The taut chain quivered behind Gregor. Harry crouched down and, to his surprise, the barking subsided. The rasping sound suggested it had been going on for quite some time. Gregor pushed his front paws forward, lowered his head and completely stopped. Harry held the door handle. It was locked. Could he hear a voice inside? A light was on in the living room.
'Arne Albu!'
No answer.
Harry waited and tried again.
The key wasn't in the lamp. So he found a suitably large stone, climbed over the veranda railing, smashed one of the small panes in the veranda door, reached his hand through and opened the door.
There was no sign of a fight in the room. More a hasty departure. A book lay open on the table. Harry lifted it up. Shakespeare's Macbeth. One line of the text had been ringed with a blue pen. I have no words; my voice is in my sword. He scanned the room but he couldn't see a pen anywhere.
Only the bed in the smallest bedroom had been used. There was a copy of a men's magazine on the bedside table.
A small radio, more or less tuned in to P4 news, babbled quietly away in the kitchen. Harry switched it off. On the worktop was a thawed entrecote steak and broccoli still encased in plastic. Harry took the meat and went to the porch. The dog was scratching at the door and he opened up. A pair of brown puppy-dog eyes stared up at him. Or, to be more accurate, at the entrecote, which had hardly landed with a splat on the step before it was ripped to pieces.
Harry observed the ravenous dog while pondering what to do. If there was anything he could do. Arne Albu didn't read Shakespeare, that much was certain.
When the last scrap of meat was gone, Gregor began to bark with renewed vigour towards the road. Harry walked over to the railing, loosened the chain and just managed to stay on his feet on the wet surface as Gregor tore loose. The dog dragged him down the path, across the road and down the steep incline where Harry could see black waves crashing onto smooth rocks gleaming white in the light of the half-moon. They waded through tall, wet grass which clung to Harry's legs as if it didn't want to let them go, but Gregor didn't stop until pebbles and sand crunched beneath Harry's Doc Martens. Gregor's rounded stump of a tail pointed upwards. They were standing on the beach. It was high tide; the waves almost reached the rigid grass and bubbled as if there was carbon dioxide in the foam left on the sand as the water retreated. Gregor began to bark again.
'Did he take a boat?' Harry asked, half to Gregor and half to himself. 'Was he alone or did he have company?'
He didn't draw a response from either of them. Nevertheless, it was clear the trail ended here. As Harry pulled at the collar, the large Rottweiler refused to budge. So Harry switched on his Maglite and shone it at the sea. All he could see were rows of white waves, like lines of cocaine on a black mirror. There was clearly a gentle slope beneath the water. Harry pulled at the chain again, but then with a desperate howl the dog started to dig in the sand with its
paws.
Harry sighed, switched off the torch and walked back to the chalet. He made himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen and listened to the distant barking. After rinsing his cup, he walked back down to the beach and found a gap between rocks to settle down and shelter from the wind. He lit a cigarette and tried to think. Then he pulled his coat tighter around him and closed his eyes.
One night they had been in her bed and Anna had said something. It must have been towards the end of the six weeks - and he must have been more sober than usual because he could remember it. She had said that her bed was a ship, and that she and Harry were two castaways, lonely people drifting on the sea, terrified they would sight land. Was that what had happened next? Had they sighted land? He didn't remember it like that. He felt as if he had jumped ship, jumped overboard. Perhaps his memory was playing tricks on him.
He closed his eyes and tried to conjure up an image of her. Not from the time they were castaways, but from the last time he had seen her. They had eaten together. Apparently. She had filled his glass -had it been wine? Had he tasted it? Apparently. She had given him a refill. He had lost his grip on things. Topped up his glass. She had laughed at him. Kissed him. Danced for him. Whispered her usual sweet nothings in his ear. They had piled into bed and cast off. Had that really been so easy for her? Or for him?
No, it can't have been.
But Harry didn't know for sure. He couldn't have said with any confidence that he hadn't been lying in a bed in Sorgenfrigata with a rapturous smile on his lips. He had been reunited with an ex-lover while Rakel lay staring up at a hotel ceiling in Moscow, unable to sleep for fear of losing her child.
Harry huddled up. The cold, raw wind blew right through him as if he were a ghost. These were thoughts he had managed to keep at bay, but now they crowded in on him: if he couldn't know whether he was capable of cheating on the woman he treasured most in his life, how could he know what else he had done? Aune maintained that drink and drugs merely strengthened or weakened qualities latent within us. But who knew for sure what was inside them? Humans are not robots and the chemistry of the brain changes over time. Who had a full inventory of all the things - given the right circumstances and the wrong medication - we are capable of doing?
Harry shivered and cursed. He knew now. Knew now why he had to find Arne Albu and get a confession before others silenced him. It wasn't because his profession had got into his bloodstream or law had become a personal matter; it was because he had to know. And Arne Albu was the only person who could tell him.
Harry closed his eyes again. The low whistle of the wind against the granite could be heard above the persistent, hypnotic rhythm of the waves.
When he opened his eyes, it was no longer dark. The wind had swept away the clouds and the matt stars twinkled above him. The moon had moved. Harry glanced at his watch. He had been sitting there for almost an hour. Gregor was barking madly at the sea. Stiff, he got to his feet and stumbled over to the dog. The gravitational pull of the moon had shifted, the water level had sunk and Harry plodded down what had become a broad sandy beach.
'Come on, Gregor. We won't find anything here.'
The dog snapped at him when he went to take his collar, and Harry automatically jumped back a step. He peered across the water. The moonlight glittered on the black surface, but now he could make out something he hadn't seen when the water was at its highest ebb. It looked like the tips of two mooring poles just above sea level. Harry went to the water's edge and shone the torch.
'Jesus Christ,' he whispered.
Gregor leapt out into the water and he waded after the dog. It was ten metres into the water, but it didn't even come up to his knees. He stared down at a pair of shoes. Hand-sewn, Italian. Harry shone the torch into the water where the light was reflected back from bare, bluish-white legs, sticking up like two pale tombstones.
Harry's shouts were carried on the wind and drowned instantly in the crashing of the waves. But the torch he dropped, to be swallowed up by the water, remained on the sandy bottom and shone for almost twenty-four hours. When the little boy who found it the following summer ran with it to his father, the salt water had corroded the black casing and neither of them connected a Maglite with the grotesque discovery of a corpse. The previous year it had been in all the papers, but in the summer sun that seemed an eternity away.
PART V
32
David Hasselhoff
The morning light stood like a white pillar through a tear in the sky and cast what Tom Waaler called 'Jesus Light' onto the fjord. A number of similar pictures had hung on the walls at home. He strode over the plastic ribbon cordoning off the crime scene. Those who thought they knew him would have said it was his nature to jump over, rather than duck under. They were right about the latter, but not the former. Tom Waaler doubted that anyone knew him. And he intended it to stay that way.
He raised a digital camera to the steel-blue lenses of his Police sunglasses, of which he had a dozen pairs at home. A return favour from an appreciative customer. As indeed the camera was, too. The frame captured the hole in the ground and the body beside it. It was wearing black trousers and a shirt which had once been white, but was now brown from the clay and sand.
'Another photo for your private collection?' It was Weber.
'This was new,' Waaler said without looking up. 'I like creative murderers. Have you identified the man?'
'Arne Albu. Forty-two years old. Married, three children. Seems to have a fair bit of money. He owns a chalet just behind here.'
'Did anyone see or hear anything?'
'They're making door-to-door inquiries now. But you can see for yourself how deserted it is here.'
'Someone at the hotel over there perhaps?' Waaler pointed towards a large yellow wooden building at the end of the beach.
'Doubt it,' Weber said. 'There won't be anyone staying at this time of the year.'
'Who found the body?'
'Anonymous call from a telephone box in Moss. To the Moss police.' 'The murderer?'
'Don't think so. He said he saw a pair of legs sticking up when he was taking his dog for a walk.'
'Have they got the conversation on tape?'
Weber shook his head. 'He didn't ring the emergency number.'
'What do you make of this?' Waaler motioned towards the corpse.
'The doctors still have to send in their report, but to me it looks like he was buried alive. No external signs of violence, but blood in the nose and mouth and burst blood vessels in the eyes suggest a large accumulation of blood in the head. In addition, we found sand deep in his throat, which means he must have been breathing when he was buried.'
'I see. Anything else?'
'The dog was tied to the railing outside his chalet up there. Great big, ugly Rottweiler. In surprisingly good shape. The door wasn't locked. No signs of a struggle inside the chalet, either.'
'In other words, they marched in, threatened him with guns, tied up the dog, dug a hole for him and asked him if he would mind jumping in.'
'If there were several of them.'
'Big Rottweiler, one-and-a-half-metre-deep hole. I think we can take that as read, Weber.'
Weber didn't react. He had never had a problem working with Waaler. The man was a talented investigator, one of the few; his results spoke for themselves. But that didn't mean Weber had to like him. Although dislike wasn't perhaps the right word. It was something else, something which made you think of Spot the Difference pictures. You couldn't quite put your finger on what it was, but there was something that disquieted you. Disquieted, that was the word.
Waaler crouched down beside the body. He knew Weber didn't like him. That was fine by him. Weber was an older police officer working in Forensics, who was going nowhere, who could not conceivably affect Waaler's career or life in any way. He was, to cut a long story short, not someone he needed to like him. 'Who identified him?'
'A few of the locals popped by,' Weber answered. 'The owner of the grocery sh
op recognised him. We got hold of his wife in Oslo and brought her out here. She's confirmed it's Arne Albu.'
'And where is she now?'
'In the chalet.'
'Has anyone questioned her?' Weber shrugged.
'I like being the first on the scene,' Waaler said, leaning forward and snapping a close-up of the face.
'Moss police district has the case. We've just been called in to assist.'
'We have the experience,' Waaler said. 'Has anyone politely explained that to the country clods?'
'A couple of us have in fact investigated murder before,' a voice behind them said. Waaler peered up at a smiling man in a black leather police jacket. The epaulettes bore one star and gold edges.
'No offence taken,' the inspector laughed. 'I'm Paul Sorensen. You must be Inspector Waaler.'
