Death in Oslo (22 page)

She couldn’t get rid of her headache. The way she was sitting, with her hands tied in front of her with thin strips of plastic that bit into the skin on her wrists, prevented her from performing her normal ritual. In desperation, she realised that the only thing she could do was to let go of the pain and to hope for salvation.

Warren, she thought, apathetically.

Then she fell asleep, in the middle of the worst attack she had ever experienced.

T
om Patrick O’Reilly stood on the corner of Madison Avenue and East 67th Street and longed to be home. It had been a tiring flight, as he hadn’t been able to sleep. He had sat on his own from Riyadh to Rome. It felt like being transported by a robot. Only when they landed in Rome did the pilot come out of the cockpit and greet him with a nod, before opening the doors. He had exactly twenty minutes until his next departure on a scheduled flight to Newark. Tom O’Reilly was sure that he wouldn’t manage it. But a woman in uniform had suddenly appeared – he had no idea where from – and miraculously rushed him through all the security checks.

The trip from Riyadh to New York had taken exactly fourteen hours, and the time difference made him feel confused and unwell. He never got used to it. His body felt heavier than normal and he couldn’t remember the last time his knee hurt so much. He had tried, without success, to cancel a couple of meetings that were scheduled in New York that afternoon.

He just wanted to go home.

The last meal with Abdallah had been eaten in silence. The food was delicious, as always. Abdallah had smiled his inscrutable smile as he ate slowly and systematically from one side of his plate to the other. His family were, as usual, not present. It was just them, Abdallah and Tom, and a silence that seemed to dominate. The servants disappeared too, once the fruit had been served. The candles had burnt down and the only light came from the big terracotta lamps on the walls.
Abdallah had eventually got up and left him with nothing more than a quiet good night. In the morning, Tom had been woken by a servant and collected by a limousine. When he got into the car, the palace seemed to be totally deserted.

He had not looked back, and now Tom O’Reilly was standing on a corner on Upper East Side, clutching an envelope in his hand. The unfamiliar uncertainty made him anxious, almost frightened. The terrifying eagle on the postbox looked as if it was about to attack. He put down his small suitcase.

He could, of course, open the letter.

He tried to look around without drawing attention. The pavement was teeming with people. Car horns hooted in irritation. An old woman with a lapdog on her arm bumped into him as she passed. She was wearing sunglasses, despite the grey skies and the drizzle in the air. On the other side of the street, he noticed three youths talking animatedly. Tom thought they looked at him. Their lips were moving, but it wasn’t possible to hear what they were saying above the noise of the city. A girl smiled at him when he met her eyes; she was pushing a pram and was lightly dressed for the cool weather. A man stopped just beside him. He looked at his watch and opened his newspaper.

Don’t be paranoid, Tom reassured himself, and stroked his chin. They’re just normal people. They’re not watching you. They’re Americans. Just ordinary Americans and I am in my own country. This is my country and I’m safe here. Don’t be paranoid.

He could open the envelope.

He could throw it away.

Maybe he should go to the police.

With what? If the letter was illegal, he would be investigated and confronted with the fact that he had actually brought it into the country. If it was OK and Abdallah had been telling the truth, he would have betrayed the man who had looked after him for so many years.

He slowly opened the outer envelope. He pulled out the one inside, with the back facing up. The letter was not sealed, only glued down in the usual way. There was no sender’s address. He froze as he was about the turn the envelope over to see who the addressee was.

What he didn’t know wouldn’t harm him.

He could still throw the envelope away. There was a rubbish bin only a few metres along the street. He could throw the letter away, go to his meetings and forget the whole thing.

But he would never be able to forget it, because he knew that Abdallah would never forget him.

He resolutely dropped the letter into the blue postbox, then he picked up his suitcase and started to walk. As he passed the rubbish bin, he scrunched up the outer envelope with no name on it and dropped it into the bin.

There was nothing wrong with posting a letter.

It was not a crime to do a friend a favour. Tom straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath. He would try to wrap up the meetings as quickly as possible and catch the early-evening flight to Chicago. He wanted to get home to Judith and the kids. He had done absolutely nothing wrong.

He was just terribly tired.

He stopped at the pedestrian crossing and waited for the green man.

Three taxis were hooting furiously, quarrelling about the inside lane on Madison Avenue. A dog barked loudly and wheels screeched on the asphalt. A little girl howled in protest when her mother pulled her by the arm to stand beside Tom. She gave him an apologetic smile. He smiled back, full of understanding, and took a couple of steps out into the road.

When the police reached the scene only a few minutes later, the witnesses all told different stories. The mother with the little girl was almost hysterical and not of much help when it came to establishing what had actually happened when the
big middle-aged man was mowed down by the green Taurus. She just hugged her daughter tight and cried. The man in the Taurus was at breaking point too, and could only sob something about ‘suddenly’ and ‘crossed on the red man’. Some of the pedestrians just shrugged their shoulders and mumbled that they hadn’t seen anything, while they sneaked looks at their watches and rushed off as soon as the police let them go.

However, it seemed that two witnesses were absolutely certain. One of them, a man in his forties, had been standing on the same side of the street as Tom O’Reilly. He could have sworn that the man had staggered and, without waiting for the green man, had just tumbled into the road. A sudden turn, thought the witness, and nodded sagely. He was more than willing to give his name and address to the overwhelmed policewoman, he said as he glanced over at the body lying motionless in the middle of the road.

‘Is he dead?’ he asked quietly, and was given a nod in confirmation.

The other witness, a younger man in a suit and tie, had been standing on the other side of 67th Street. He gave a description of events that was remarkably similar to the first man. The policewoman also noted his personal details and was relieved to be able to reassure the distraught driver that it all appeared to be a terrible accident. The driver started to breathe more evenly and some hours later, thanks to the clarity of the witnesses, was a free man again.

Not much more than an hour after Tom O’Reilly had died, the place had been cleared. His body was swiftly identified and driven away. Traffic flowed as before. The remains of blood on the asphalt did make the odd passer-by wonder for a moment, but a shower around six in the evening washed the road clean of the final remains of the tragedy.

‘W
ho did you get the idea from?’

The policeman who was sitting in front of the monitor in the gym at the police HQ and who had spent more than a day and a half going through footage that showed nothing other than an empty corridor stared at Adam Stubo with scepticism. ‘It’s not logical,’ he added in an aggressive tone. ‘There can’t be anyone who would think that something interesting was recorded after the woman disappeared.’

‘Yes,’ replied Bastesen, Chief of Police. ‘It is completely logical, and it’s a huge blunder on our part that we didn’t think of it. But what’s done is done. So now let’s see what you can show us.’

Warren Scifford had eventually returned. It had taken Adam half an hour to get hold of him. The American didn’t answer his mobile phone and no one picked up the phone at the embassy. When he did show up, he just smiled and shrugged without giving any explanation as to where he’d been. He took off his coat on his way into the gym, where the air was now unbearable.

‘Fill me in,’ he said, grabbing an empty chair, which he pulled into the table and sat down on.

The policeman’s fingers leapt over the keyboard. The screen flickered grey, before the picture was clear. They had seen this part of the video many times before: two Secret Service agents walking towards the door of the presidential suite. One of them knocked on the door.

The digital clock on the top left-hand corner of the screen showed 07:18:23.

The agents stood there for a few seconds before one of them tried the door.

‘Strange that the door was open,’ muttered the policeman, fingers ready at the keyboard.

No one said anything.

The men went in and disappeared from the scope of the camera.

‘Just let the film run,’ Adam said quickly, and noted the time.

07:19:02.

07:19:58.

The two mean came tearing out.

‘That’s where we’ve stopped,’ the policeman said, exasperated. ‘That’s where I stopped and went back to twenty past twelve.’

‘Fifty-six seconds,’ Adam said. ‘They were in her room for fifty-six seconds before they came running out and raised the alarm.’

‘Under a minute to cover more than a hundred square metres,’ Bastesen mused and rubbed his chin. ‘That’s not much of a search.’

‘Would you please speak English,’ Warren requested without taking his eyes from the screen.

‘Sorry,’ Adam said. ‘As you can see, they can’t have done a very thorough search. They saw the apparently empty suite, read the note and that’s about it. Hang on. Look, look there!’

He bent down towards the screen and pointed. The policeman at the keyboard had fast-forwarded to a frame where a movement could be seen at the bottom of the screen.

‘A . . . a chambermaid?’

Warren squinted.

‘Chamber boy,’ Adam corrected. ‘If there is such a thing.’

The cleaner was a relatively young man. He was wearing a practical uniform and pushing a large trolley in front of him. It had shelves of shampoo bottles and other small items and a deep, apparently empty basket in front for dirty laundry. The man paused a moment before opening the door to the suite and going in, pushing the trolley in front of him.

‘07:23:41.’ Adam read the numbers slowly. ‘Do we have an overview of what was happening elsewhere at that time? In the rest of the hotel?’

‘Not a complete one, no,’ Bastesen said. ‘But I can safely say that it was generally . . . chaotic. The most important thing is that no one was watching the CCTV screens. There was a full alarm and we had problems with—’

‘Not even your people?’ Adam cut in, looking at Warren.

The American didn’t answer. His eyes were glued to the screen. The clock showed 07:25:32 when the cleaner came out again. He struggled to get the trolley over the threshold. The wheels were pressing down against it and the front of the trolley was stuck for a few seconds before he finally managed to push it out into the corridor.

The basket was full. A sheet or a large towel lay on top; one of the corners was hanging over the edge. The trolley approached the camera and the man’s face was clearly visible.

‘Does he work there?’ Adam asked quietly. ‘I mean, really work there. Is he an employee?’

Bastesen nodded. ‘We’ve got people on their way to pick him up now,’ he whispered. ‘But that man there . . .’ He pointed to the man who was behind the young Pakistani cleaner; a sturdy figure dressed in a dark suit with dark shoes. His hair was thick and short, and he had a hand pressed against the Pakistani boy’s back, as if to hurry him along. He was carrying something that resembled a small, foldable ladder. ‘We don’t know anything about him for the moment. But it’s only twenty minutes since we saw this for the first time, so the work . . .’

Adam wasn’t listening. He was staring at Warren Scifford. The American’s face was grey, and he had a thin layer of sweat on his forehead. He was biting his knuckles and still had not said a word.

‘Is something wrong?’ Adam asked.

‘Shit,’ Warren responded in anger, and then got up abruptly, almost tipping the chair over. He pulled his coat from the chair, hesitated for a moment and then repeated, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, ‘Shit! Shit!’

He grabbed Adam hard by the arm. The sweat had made the curls in his fringe stick to his forehead.

‘I have to see the hotel room immediately. Now.’

He stormed over towards the door. Adam exchanged looks with the Chief of Police before shrugging and jogging after the American.

‘He didn’t say who it was who gave him the idea,’ the policeman by the computer said sulkily. ‘You know, to check the footage from later. Did you catch who that bloody genius was?’

The woman at the neighbouring table shrugged.

‘Now, at least, I’ve definitely earned a rest,’ the man said, and went in search of something that might resemble a bed.

H
elen Lardahl Bentley woke up from a heavy sleep. She had no idea how long she had been out cold, but she remembered she had been sitting on the flimsy chair by the wall when the attack started. When she tried to sit up, she noticed that her right arm and shoulder had been hurt. A large bump on her temple made it difficult to open her eye.

The fall should have woken her. Maybe she had lost consciousness when she hit the floor. She must have been out of it for a long time. She couldn’t get up. Her body wouldn’t listen to her. She had to remember to breathe.

Her mind was spinning. It was impossible to focus on anything. She caught a glimpse of her daughter as a child, a little fair-haired three-year-old, the most beautiful one of all – and then she vanished. Billie was sucked into the light on the wall, which was like a deep red hole, and Helen Bentley remembered her grandma’s funeral, and the rose she had laid on the coffin; it was red, and dead, and the light was so bright that it hurt her eyes.