Harry Hole 02 - Cockroaches (11 page)

Sanphet got up, accepted it with surprise and stood looking at it.

‘Goodbye,’ Harry said, making a clumsy but well-meant
wai
greeting and motioning to Nho that they were going.

‘Wait,’ the chauffeur said. His eyes were still fixed on the cassette. ‘The ambassador was a good man. But he wasn’t a happy man. He had one weakness. I don’t want to sully his memory, but he lost more than he won on horses.’

‘Most do,’ Harry said.

‘Not five million baht.’

Harry tried to calculate in his head. Nho came to his rescue.

‘A hundred thousand dollars.’

Harry whistled. ‘Well, well, if he could afford that then—’

‘He couldn’t afford it,’ Sanphet said. ‘He borrowed money from some loan sharks in Bangkok. They rang him several times over the last few weeks.’ He looked at Harry. It was difficult to interpret his expression. ‘Personally, I believe a man has to settle gambling debts, but if someone killed him for the money I think they should be punished.’

‘So the ambassador wasn’t a happy man?’

‘He didn’t have an easy life.’

Harry remembered something. ‘Does Man U mean anything to you?’

The chauffeur’s expression clouded over.

‘It was on the ambassador’s calendar for the day of the murder. I checked the TV guide and no one was showing Manchester United that day.’

‘Oh, Manchester United,’ Sanphet smiled. ‘That’s Klipra. The ambassador called him Mr Man U. He flies to England to see games and has bought loads of shares in the club. A very peculiar person.’

‘We’ll see. I’ll have a chat with him later.’

‘If you can get hold of him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You don’t get hold of Klipra. He gets hold of you.’

That’s all we need, Harry thought. A caricature.

‘The gambling debts radically change the picture,’ Nho said, back in the car.

‘Maybe,’ Harry said. ‘A hundred thousand dollars is a lot of cash, but is it enough?’

‘People are murdered in Bangkok for less than that,’ Nho said. ‘Much less. Believe me.’

‘It’s not the loan sharks I’m thinking about, it’s Atle Molnes. The guy comes from a very wealthy family. He should be able to pay, at least if it was a matter of life and death. There’s something not right here. What do you think about Mr Sanphet?’

‘He was lying when he talked about Miss Ao.’

‘Oh? What makes you say that?’

Nho didn’t answer, just smiled secretively and tapped his temple.

‘What are you trying to tell me, Nho? That you know when people are lying?’

‘I learned it from my mother. During the Vietnam War she lived as a poker player on Soi Cowboy.’

‘Rubbish. I know police officers who have questioned people all their lives, and they all say the same: you can’t learn to see through a good liar.’

‘It’s a matter of having eyes in your head. You can see it in small things. Such as when you didn’t open your mouth properly when you said everyone who loves Grieg should have a copy of the cassette.’

Harry could feel the heat rising in his cheeks. ‘The cassette happened to be in my Walkman. An Australian policeman told me about Grieg’s symphony in C minor. I bought the cassette in memory of him.’

‘It worked anyway.’

Nho swerved from the path of a lorry bearing down on them.

‘Bloody hell!’ Harry didn’t even have time to be afraid. ‘He was in the wrong lane!’

Nho shrugged. ‘He was bigger than me.’

Harry looked at his watch. ‘We have to pop into the station, and I’ve got a funeral to go to.’ He thought with dread of the hot jacket hanging in the cupboard outside the ‘office’.

‘I hope there’s air conditioning in the church. By the way, how come we had to sit in the street in the baking sun? Why didn’t the old boy invite us into the shade?’

‘Pride,’ Nho said.

‘Pride?’

‘He lives in a small room which has precious little to do with the car he drives and the place he works. He didn’t want to invite us in because it would have been unpleasant, not just for him but also for us.’

‘Strange man.’

‘This is Thailand,’ Nho said. ‘I wouldn’t invite you into my place, either. I would serve you tea on the steps.’

He made a sudden right turn and a couple of the three-wheeled tuk-tuks swerved in horror. Harry instinctively put out his hands in front of him.

‘I’m—’

‘—bigger than they are. Thanks, Nho, I think I’ve got the principle.’

13

Sunday 12 January

‘HE’S GONE UP
in smoke now,’ Harry’s neighbour said, crossing himself. He was a powerful-looking man with a deep tan and light blue eyes, reminding Harry of stained wood and faded denim. His silk shirt was open at the neck, around which hung a thick gold chain that gleamed in the sun, matt and thick. His nose was covered with a fine network of blood vessels, and his brown skull shone like a billiard ball beneath the thinning hair. Roald Bork had lively eyes which at close range made him seem younger than his seventy years.

He talked. Loudly and apparently uninhibited by the fact that they were at a funeral. His Nordland dialect sang beneath the vaulted ceiling, but no one turned with a reproving stare.

When they were outside the crematorium, Harry introduced himself.

‘Well now, so I had a policeman standing next to me all the time without me knowing. Good job I didn’t say anything. It could have cost me.’

He laughed a reverberating laugh and held out a dry, leathery old-man’s hand. ‘Bork, on the lowest pension.’ The irony didn’t reach his eyes.

‘Tonje Wiig said you were a kind of spiritual leader for the Norwegian community here.’

‘Then I might have to disappoint you. As you see, I’m a decrepit old man, no shepherd. Besides, I’ve moved to the periphery, in both a literal and metaphorical sense.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘To the den of iniquity, Thailand’s Sodom.’

‘Pattaya?’

‘Correct. There are a few other Norwegians living there who I try to keep in order.’

‘Let me get straight to the point, Bork. We’ve been trying to contact Ove Klipra, but all we got was a gatekeeper who says he doesn’t know where Klipra is or when he’ll be returning.’

Bork chuckled. ‘That sounds like Klipra all right.’

‘I’ve been told he prefers to make contact himself, but we’re in the middle of a murder investigation here and I don’t have a lot of time. I gather you’re a close friend of Klipra’s, a kind of link to the outside world?’

Bork angled his head. ‘I’m no adjutant, if that’s what you mean. But you’re right insomuch as I mediate contacts. Klipra doesn’t like speaking to people he doesn’t know.’

‘Was it you who arranged the contact between Klipra and the ambassador?’

‘Initially it was. But Klipra liked the ambassador, so they spent a lot of time together. The ambassador was also from Sunnmøre, although he was from the country and not a real Ålesund lad like Klipra.’

‘Odd he’s not here today then?’

‘Klipra travels all the time. He hasn’t answered his phone for a few days, so I would guess he’s out seeing to his businesses in Vietnam or Laos and doesn’t even know the ambassador is dead. This case hasn’t exactly hit the headlines.’

‘It generally doesn’t when a man dies of heart failure,’ Harry said.

‘So that’s why the Norwegian police are here, is it?’ Bork asked, drying the sweat from his neck with a large white handkerchief.

‘Routine when an ambassador dies abroad,’ Harry said, jotting down the telephone number of the police station on the back of a business card.

‘Here’s a number where you can reach me if Klipra should turn up.’

Bork studied the card, appeared to be on the point of saying something, but changed his mind, put the card in his breast pocket and nodded.

‘I’ve got your number then,’ he said, shook hands and walked over to an old Land Rover. Behind him, half mounted on the pavement, came a glint from recently washed red paintwork. It was the same Porsche Harry had seen pull up in front of the Molneses’ house.

Tonje Wiig strolled over to him. ‘Was Bork able to help you?’

‘Not this time round.’

‘What did he say about Klipra? Did he know where he was?’

‘He didn’t know anything.’

She didn’t make a move to go, and Harry had a vague sense that she was waiting for more. In a moment of paranoia he saw the flinty glare of the diplomat at Fornebu Airport – ‘No scandals, OK?’ Could she have been told to keep an eye on Harry and let Director Torhus know if he went too far? He looked at her and immediately rejected the idea.

‘Who owns the red Porsche?’ he asked.

‘Porsche?’

‘There. I thought Østfold girls knew all the makes of car before they were sixteen?’

Tonje Wiig ignored the comment and put on her sunglasses. ‘It’s Jens’s car.’

‘Jens Brekke?’

‘Yes. He’s over there.’

Harry turned. On the steps stood Hilde Molnes, dressed in dramatic black silk robes with a serious-looking Sanphet in a dark suit. Behind them stood a younger, fair-haired man. Harry had noticed him in the church. He wore a waistcoat under his suit, despite the thermometer showing thirty-five degrees. His eyes were concealed behind a pair of expensive-looking sunglasses, and he was speaking in a low voice with a woman, also dressed in black. Harry stared at her, and as though she had felt his eyes on her she turned towards him. He hadn’t recognised Runa Molnes at once, and now he could see why. The singular asymmetry was gone. She was taller than the others on the steps. Her gaze was brief and betrayed no feelings, apart from boredom.

Harry excused himself, walked up the steps and offered Hilde his condolences. Her hand was limp and passive in his. She looked at him through glazed eyes, and the smell of strong perfume camouflaged the gin.

Then he turned to Runa. She shielded her eyes from the sun and squinted up as though she had only just noticed him.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘At last someone who is taller than me in this country of pygmies. Aren’t you the detective who came to our house?’

There was an aggressive undertone to her voice, a teenager’s forced self-confidence.
Her
handshake was firm and strong. Harry’s eyes automatically sought the other hand. A wax prosthesis protruded from the black sleeve.

‘Detective?’

Jens Brekke was speaking.

He had removed his sunglasses and was squinting. An untidy blond fringe fell in front of almost transparent blue irises. His round face still had a boy’s puppy fat, but the wrinkles around his eyes suggested he had passed thirty at least. The Armani suit had been exchanged for a classic Del Georgio and the hand-sewn Bally shoes were like black mirrors, but there was something about his appearance that reminded Harry of a rude twelve-year-old dressed as an adult. He introduced himself.

‘I’m here from the Norwegian police to make some routine inquiries.’

‘I see. Is that normal?’

‘You spoke to the ambassador on the day he died, didn’t you?’

Brekke gazed at Harry in surprise. ‘That’s right. How did you know?’

‘We found his mobile phone. Your number was one of the last five he rang. He called at quarter past one.’

Harry studied Brekke carefully, but his face registered no uncertainty or confusion.

‘Can we have a chat?’

‘Drop by,’ Brekke said, conjuring up a business card between index and middle fingers.

‘At home or at work?’

‘I sleep at home.’

It was impossible to
see
the little smile playing around the corners of his mouth, but Harry knew it was there nevertheless. As though talking to a detective was just something exciting, something a little out of the ordinary.

‘If you’ll excuse me?’

Brekke whispered a few words in Runa’s ear, nodded to Hilde and jogged down to his Porsche. The place was thinning out; Sanphet accompanied Hilde Molnes to the embassy car and Harry was left standing next to Runa.

‘There’s a gathering at the embassy,’ he said.

‘I know. Mum doesn’t feel like going.’

‘Right. You’ve probably got family staying.’

‘No,’ she said.

Harry watched Sanphet close the door after Hilde Molnes and walk round the car.

‘Well, you can take a taxi with me, if you’d like.’

Harry could feel his earlobes flush when he heard how that sounded. He had meant to say ‘if you’d like to go’.

She glanced up at him. Her eyes were black and he didn’t know what they were saying.

‘I wouldn’t.’ She started to walk towards the embassy car.

Spirits were low and no one said much. Tonje Wiig had invited Harry to the gathering, and they stood in a corner twirling their glasses. Tonje was well down her second Martini. Harry had asked for water, but instead he had been given a sticky, sweet orange drink.

‘So you have family at home, Harry?’

‘Some,’ Harry said, unsure what the sudden change of topic meant.

‘Me too,’ she said. ‘Parents, brother and sister. A couple of aunts and uncles, no grandparents. That’s it. And you?’

‘Something similar.’

Miss Ao wound her way past them with a tray of drinks. She was wearing a simple, traditional Thai dress with a long slit down the side. He followed her with his eyes. It wasn’t difficult to imagine how the ambassador might have fallen for the temptation.

At the other end of the room, in front of a large map of the world, stood a man rocking on his heels, his legs wide. He was straight-backed, broad-shouldered and his silver-grey hair was cropped like Harry’s. His eyes were hooded, his jaw was set and his hands were folded behind his back. There was a smell of military from a long way off.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Ivar Løken. The ambassador called him simply LM.’

‘Løken? Funny. He wasn’t on the list of employees I was given by Oslo. What does he do?’

‘Good question.’ She giggled and sipped her drink. ‘Sorry, Harry – is it all right if I call you Harry? – I must be a bit tipsy. I’ve had so much work and so little sleep over the last few days. He came here last year, just after Molnes. To put it bluntly, he belongs to the part of the Ministry that’s going nowhere.’

‘What does that mean?’