by Jo Nesbo
“Well,” Harry said, keeping an eye on the priest’s folded hands. Sat on the edge of the bed with both feet on the floor, ready, as it were, with so much weight on his toes that he could feel the thin nylon cord beneath his shoe. “What about you, Rudolf? Do the rumors exaggerate in your case?”
“Which ones?”
“Well, for example, the ones saying you ran a heroin network in Gothenburg and killed a policeman there.”
“Sounds like it’s me who has to confess and not you, eh?”
“Thought it would be good to unburden your sins onto Jesus before you die.”
More chug-chug laughter. “Good one, Harry! Good one! Yes, we had to eliminate him. He was our burner, and I had a feeling he was not reliable. And I couldn’t go back to prison. There’s a stale dampness that eats away at your soul, the way mold eats walls. Every day takes another chunk. Your human side is consumed, Harry. It’s something I would wish only on my worst enemy.” He looked at Harry. “An enemy I hate above all else.”
“You know why I came back to Oslo. What was your reason? I thought Sweden was as good a market as Norway.”
“Same as you, Harry.”
“Same?”
Rudolf Asayev took a drag of the black cigarette before answering. “Forget it. The police were on my heels after the murder. And it’s strange how far away you are from Sweden in Norway, despite the proximity.”
“And when you came back you became the mysterious Dubai. The man no one had seen. But who was thought to haunt the town at night. The ghost of Kvadraturen.”
“I had to stay undercover. Not only because of the businesses, but because the name Rudolf Asayev would bring back bad memories for the police.”
“In the seventies and eighties,” Harry said, “heroin addicts died like flies. But perhaps you included them in your prayers, Pastor?”
The old man shrugged. “One doesn’t judge people who make sports cars, BASE-jumping parachutes, handguns or other goods people buy for fun and yet send them to their deaths. I deliver something people want, of quality and at a price that makes me competitive. What customers do with the goods is up to them. You are aware, aren’t you, that there are fully functioning citizens who take opiates?”
“Yes, I was one of them. The difference between you and a sports car manufacturer is that what you do is forbidden by law.”
“One should be careful mixing law and morality, Harry.”
“So you think your god will exonerate you?”
The old man rested his chin on his hand. Harry could sense his exhaustion, but he knew it could be faked, and watched his movements carefully.
“I heard you were a zealous policeman and a moralist, Harry. Oleg spoke about you to Gusto. Did you know that? Oleg loved you like a father would wish a son to love him. Zealous moralists and love-hungry fathers like us have enormous dynamism. Our weakness is that we are predictable. It was just a question of time before you came. We have a connection at Gardermoen who sees the passenger lists. We knew you were on your way even before you sat down on the plane in Hong Kong.”
“Mm. Was that the burner, Truls Berntsen?”
The old man smiled by way of answer.
“And what about Isabelle Skøyen? Did you work with her, too?”
The old man heaved a heavy sigh. “You know I’ll take the answers with me to the grave. I’m happy to die like a dog, but not like an informer.”
“Well,” Harry said, “what happened next?”
“Andrey followed you from the airport to Hotel Leon. I stay at a variety of similar hotels when I’m in circulation as Cato, and Leon is a place I’ve stayed at a lot. So I checked in the day after you.”
“Why?”
“To follow what you were doing. I wanted to see if you were getting close to us.”
“As you did when Beret Man stayed here?”
The old man nodded. “I knew you could be dangerous, Harry. But I liked you. So I tried to give you some friendly warnings.” He sighed. “But you didn’t listen. Of course you didn’t. People like you and me don’t, Harry. That’s why we succeed. And that’s also in the end why we always fail.”
“Mm. What were you afraid I would do? Persuade Oleg to snitch?”
“That, too. Oleg had never seen me, but I couldn’t know what Gusto had told him. Gusto was, sad to say, untrustworthy, especially after he began to take violin himself.” There was something in the old man’s eyes that Harry realized with a jolt was not the result of tiredness. It was pain. Sheer, unadulterated pain.
“So when you thought Oleg would talk to me you tried to have him killed. And when that didn’t work you offered to help me. So that I would lead you to Oleg.”
The old man nodded slowly. “It’s not personal, Harry. Those are the rules in this industry. Snitches are eliminated. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I knew. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to kill you for following your rules.”
“So why haven’t you done it already? Don’t you dare? Afraid you’ll burn in hell, Harry?”
Harry stubbed out his cigarette on the table. “Because I want to know a couple of things first. Why did you kill Gusto? Were you afraid he would inform on you?”
The old man stroked his white hair back around his Dumbo ears. “Gusto had bad blood flowing through his veins, just like me. He was an informer by nature. He would have informed on me earlier—all that was missing was something to gain. But then he became desperate. It was the craving for violin. It’s pure chemistry. The flesh is stronger than the spirit. We all weaken when the craving’s there.”
“Yes,” Harry said. “We all weaken then.”
“I …” The old man coughed. “I had to let him go.”
“Go?”
“Yes. Go. Sink. Disappear. I couldn’t let him take over the businesses, I realized. He was smart enough—he had inherited that from his father. It was spine he lacked. He inherited that deficiency from his mother. I tried to give him responsibility, but he failed the test.” The old man kept stroking his hair back, harder and harder, as if it were steeped in something he was trying to clean. “Didn’t pass the test. Bad blood. So I decided it would have to be someone else. At first I thought of Andrey and Peter. Siberian Cossacks from Omsk. Cossack means ‘free man.’ Did you know that? Andrey and Peter were my regiment, my stanitsa. They’re loyal to their ataman, faithful to the death. But Andrey and Peter were not businessmen, you know.” Harry noticed the old man’s gesticulations, as if immersed in his own brooding thoughts. “I couldn’t leave the shop to them. So I decided it would have to be Sergey. He was young, had his future in front of him, could be molded …”
“You told me you might have had a son yourself once.”
“Sergey may not have had Gusto’s head for figures, but he was disciplined. Ambitious. Willing to do what was required to be an ataman. So I gave him the knife. There was only one remaining test. For a Cossack to become an ataman in the old days you had to go into the taiga and come back with a living wolf, tied and bound. Sergey was willing, but I had to see that he could also accomplish chto nuzhno.”
“Pardon?”
“ ‘The necessary.’ ”
“Was that son Gusto?”
The old man stroked his hair back so hard his eyes narrowed to two slits.
“Gusto was six months old when I was sent to prison. His mother sought solace where she could. At least for a short while. She was in no position to take care of him.”
“Heroin?”
“Social services took Gusto from her and provided foster parents. They were in agreement that I, the prisoner, did not exist. She OD’d the following winter. She should have done it before.”
“You said you came back to Oslo for the same reason as I did. Your son.”
“I’d been told he had moved away from his foster family, had strayed off the straight and narrow. I had been thinking of leaving Sweden anyway, and the competition in Oslo wasn’t up to much. I found out where Gust
o hung out. Studied him from a distance at first. He was so good-looking. So damned good-looking. Like his mother, of course. I could just sit looking at him. Looking and looking, and thinking, He’s my son, my own …” The old man’s voice choked.
Harry stared at his feet, at the nylon cord he had been given instead of a new curtain pole, pressed it into the floor with the sole of his shoe.
“And then you took him into your business. And tested him to see if he could take over.”
The old man nodded. Whispered: “But I never said anything. When he died he didn’t know I was his father.”
“Why the sudden haste?”
“Haste?”
“Why did you need to have someone take over so quickly? First Gusto, then Sergey.”
The old man mustered a weary smile. Leaned forward in his chair, into the light from the reading lamp above the bed.
“I’m ill.”
“Mm. Thought it was something like that. Cancer?”
“The doctors gave me a year. Six months ago. The sacred knife Sergey used had been lying under my mattress. Do you feel any pain in your wound? That’s my suffering the knife has transmitted to you, Harry.”
Harry nodded slowly. It fit. And it didn’t fit.
“If you have only months left to live why are you so afraid of being snitched on that you want to kill your own son? His long life for your short one?”
The old man gave a muffled cough. “Urkas and Cossacks are the regiment’s simple men, Harry. We swear allegiance to a code, and we stick to it. Not blindly, but with open eyes. We’re trained to discipline our feelings. That makes us masters of our own lives. Abraham said yes to sacrificing his son because—”
“It was God’s command. I have no idea what kind of code you’re talking about, but does it say it’s all right to let an eighteen-year-old go to prison for your crimes?”
“Harry, Harry, have you not understood? I didn’t kill Gusto.”
Harry stared at the old man. “Didn’t you just say it was your code? To kill your own son if you had to?”
“Yes, I did, but I also said I was born of bad people. I love my son. I could never have taken Gusto’s life. Quite the opposite. I say screw Abraham and his god.” The old man’s laughter morphed into coughing. He laid his hands on his chest, bent over his knees and coughed and coughed.
Harry blinked. “Who killed him, then?”
The old man straightened up. In his right hand he was holding a revolver. It was a large, ugly object and looked even older than its owner.
“You should know better than to come to me without a weapon, Harry.”
Harry didn’t answer. The MP5 was at the bottom of a water-filled cellar, the rifle at Truls Berntsen’s flat.
“Who killed Gusto?” Harry repeated.
“It could have been anyone.”
Harry seemed to hear a creak as the old man’s finger curled around the trigger.
“It’s not very difficult to kill, Harry. Don’t you agree?”
“I do,” Harry said, lifting his foot. There was a whistle as the thin nylon cord shot up toward the curtain pole holder.
Harry saw the question marks in the old man’s eyes, saw his brain working lightning-fast with the half-digested bits of information.
The light that didn’t work.
The chair that was in the middle of the room.
Harry, who hadn’t searched him.
Harry, who hadn’t moved an inch from where he was sitting.
And perhaps now he could see the nylon cord in the semi-gloom as it ran from under Harry’s shoe via the curtain pole holder to the ceiling lamp fitting right above his head. Where there was no longer a lamp but the only thing Harry had taken from Blindernveien apart from the priest’s collar. Which was all he had in his mind as he lay on Rudolf Asayev’s four-poster bed, soaking wet, gasping for breath as black dots jumped in and out of his vision and he was sure he was going to pass out any second, but fought to stay conscious, to stay on this side of the darkness. Then he had got up, and taken the zjuk, which was beside the Bible.
Rudolf Asayev hurled himself to the left, so the steel nails embedded in the brick did not pierce his head but the skin between the collarbone and the shoulder muscle, which continued down to a juncture of nerve fibers, the cervico-brachial plexus, with the result that when, two hundredths of a second later, he pulled the trigger, the muscle in his upper arm was paralyzed, causing his revolver to drop three inches. The powder hissed and burned for the thousandth of a second the bullet needed to leave the barrel of the old Nagant. Three thousandths of a second later the bullet bored into the bed frame between Harry’s calves.
Harry got up. Flicked the security catch to the side and pressed the release button. The shaft quivered as the blade sprang out. Harry swung his hand, low, past the hip, with a straight arm, and the long, thin knife blade entered midway between the coat lapels, down the priest’s shirt. He felt the material and skin give, then the blade slid in up to the hilt without any resistance. Harry let go of the knife, knowing that Rudolf Asayev was a dying man as the chair tipped back and the Russian hit the floor with a groan. He kicked the chair away, but stayed where he was, curled up like an injured but still dangerous wasp. Harry stood astride him, bent down and pulled the knife out of his body. Looked at the abnormally deep-red color of the blood. From the liver, maybe. The old man’s left hand scrabbled across the floor, around the paralyzed right arm, searching for the pistol. And for one wild moment Harry wished the hand would find it, give him the pretext he needed to …
Harry kicked the pistol away, heard it thud against the wall.
“The iron,” whispered the old man. “Bless me with my iron, my boy. It’s burning. For both of our sakes, bring this to an end.”
Harry closed his eyes for a brief instant. Could feel he had lost it. It was gone. The hatred. The wonderful, white hatred that had been the fuel that had kept him going. He had run out of it.
“No, thank you,” Harry said. Stepped over and away from the old man. Buttoned up the wet coat. “I’m going now, Rudolf Asayev. I’ll ask the boy in reception to call for an ambulance. Then I’ll call my ex-boss and tell him where they can find you.”
The old man chuckled, and red bubbles formed at the corner of his mouth. “The knife, Harry. It’s not murder—I’m already dead. You won’t end up in hell, I promise you. I’ll tell them at the gate not to drag you in.”
“It’s not hell that frightens me.” Harry put the wet pack of Camels in his coat pocket. “I’m a policeman. Our job is to bring alleged lawbreakers to justice.”
The bubbles burst when the old man coughed. “Come on, Harry, your sheriff’s badge is made of plastic. I’m ill. The only thing a judge can do is give me prison, kisses, hugs and morphine. And I committed so many murders. Rivals I hanged from bridges. Employees, like that pilot we used the brick on. The police, too. Beret Man. I sent Andrey and Peter to your room to shoot you. You and Truls Berntsen. And do you know why? To make it look like you two had shot each other. We had left the weapon as proof. Come on now, Harry.”
Harry wiped the knife blade on the bedsheet. “Why did you want to kill Berntsen? After all, he worked for you.”
Asayev turned onto his side and he seemed to be able to breathe better. He lay like that for a couple of seconds before answering. “He tried to steal a stockpile of heroin from Alnabru behind my back. It wasn’t my heroin, but when you discover your burner is so greedy you can’t trust him and at the same time he knows enough about you to bring you down, you know the sum of the risks has become too great. And then businessmen like me eliminate the risk, Harry. We saw a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. You and Berntsen.” He chuckled. “Like I tried to murder your boy in Botsen. Feel the hatred now, Harry? I almost murdered your boy.”
Harry stopped by the door. “Who killed Gusto?”
“Humanity lives by the gospel of hatred. Follow the hatred, Harry.”
“Who are your contacts in th
e police and on the City Council?”
“If I tell you, will you help me to bring this to an end?”
Harry looked at him. Nodded quickly. Hoped the lie wasn’t transparent.
“Come closer,” whispered the old man.
Harry bent down. And suddenly the old man’s hand, like a stiff claw, had grabbed his lapels and pulled him close. The whetstone voice wheezed softly in his ear.
“You know I paid a man to confess to the murder of Gusto, Harry. But you thought it was because I couldn’t kill Oleg as long as he was being held in a secret location. Wrong. My man in the police force has access to the witness protection program. I could have had Oleg stabbed to death just as easily where he was. But I had changed my mind. I didn’t want him to get away so …”
Harry tried to tear himself away, but the old man held him tight.
“I wanted him hung upside down with a plastic bag over his head,” the voice rumbled. “His head in a clear plastic bag. Water running down his feet. Water following the body all the way down into the bag. I wanted to film it. With sound, so that you could hear the screams. And afterward I would have sent you the film. And if you let me go this is still my plan. You’ll be surprised how quickly they release me for lack of evidence, Harry. And then I’ll find him, Harry, I swear I will—you just keep an eye on your mailbox for when the DVD comes.”
Harry acted instinctively, swung his hand. Felt the blade gain purchase. Go deep. He twisted it. Heard the old man gasp. Continued to twist. Closed his eyes and felt intestines and organs curling around, bursting, turning inside out. And when at last he heard the old man scream, it was Harry’s own scream.
Harry was woken by the sun shining on one side of his face. Or was it a noise that had woken him?
He carefully opened one eye and peered around him.
Saw a living-room window and blue sky. No noise—not now, at any rate.
He breathed in the smell of a smoke-ingrained sofa and raised his head. Remembered where he was.
He had left the old man’s room for his own, calmly packed his canvas suitcase, exited the hotel via the back stairs and taken a taxi to the only place he could be sure no one would find him: the house belonging to Nybakk’s parents in Oppsal. It didn’t look as if anyone had been there since he left, and the first thing he did was to ransack the drawers in the kitchen and bathroom until he had a packet of painkillers. He had taken four tablets, washed the old man’s blood off his hands and gone down to the cellar to see if Stig Nybakk had made a decision.
