Harry Hole 02 - Cockroaches (23 page)

‘If we let Brekke go something might happen. Perhaps we can entice the murderer out of his corner.’

‘Sorry,’ Liz said. She stared at the table. ‘We’re holding on to Brekke.’

‘What?’ Harry couldn’t believe his ears.

‘Chief’s orders.’

‘But—’

‘That’s the way it is.’

‘Besides, we have a new clue which points to Norway,’ Rangsan said. ‘Forensics sent the results of the tests on the knife grease to their Norwegian colleagues to see what they made of it. They discovered it was reindeer grease, and we don’t have a lot of that in Thailand. Someone in Forensics suggested we should arrest Father Christmas.’

Nho and Sunthorn sniggered.

‘But then Oslo said reindeer fat was used by the Sami in Norway to protect their knives.’

‘A Thai knife and Norwegian grease. This is getting more and more interesting.’ Liz stood up abruptly. ‘Goodnight, everyone. I hope you’ll all be well rested and ready to go tomorrow.’

Harry stopped her by the lift and asked for an explanation.

‘Listen, Harry, this is Thailand and the rules are different. Our Police Chief has got involved and told the Commissioner in Oslo that we’ve found the murderer. He thinks it’s Brekke, and when I informed him of the latest developments he wasn’t exactly thrilled, and he insisted that Brekke be held in custody until at least he has an alibi.’

‘But—’

‘Face, Harry, face. Don’t forget that in Thailand you’re brought up never to admit a mistake.’

‘And when everyone knows who made the mistake?’

‘Then everyone helps out and makes sure it doesn’t look like a mistake.’

Fortuitously, the lift doors opened and closed behind Liz, thus saving her the benefit of Harry’s opinion on the matter. Harry thought about ‘All Along the Watchtower’. And now he remembered the line as well that there must be some way out of here.

Was there?

Outside his flat was a letter, and he saw Runa’s name on the back.

He unbuttoned his shirt. Sweat lay like a fine layer of oil on his chest and stomach. He tried to remember what it was like being seventeen. Had he been in love? Probably.

He put the letter on the bedside table, unopened, the way he was thinking of returning it. Then he reclined on the bed and half a million cars and an air-conditioning system tried to lull him to sleep.

He thought about Birgitta, the Swedish girl he had met in Australia and who had said she loved him. What was it that Aune had said? That he was ‘frightened of committing to other people’? The last thought he remembered was that all redemption comes complete with a hangover. And vice versa.

31

Saturday 18 January

JENS BREKKE LOOKED
as if he hadn’t slept since Harry last saw him. His eyes were bloodshot and his hands fidgeted on the table.

‘So you don’t remember the car-park attendant with the Afro,’ Harry said.

Brekke shook his head. ‘As I said, I don’t use the car park myself.’

‘Let’s forget Jim Love for the time being,’ Harry said. ‘Let’s concentrate on who’s trying to put you in the slammer.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Someone’s gone to an awful lot of trouble to destroy your alibi.’

Jens arched his eyebrows so high they almost disappeared into his hairline.

‘On the thirteenth of January someone put the seventh of January video cassette into the recorder thereby deleting the hours when we would have seen the ambassador’s car and you accompanying him down to the car park.’

Jen’s eyebrows came back down and knitted into an ‘M’. ‘Eh?’

‘Think about it.’

‘I have enemies, you mean?’

‘Maybe. Or maybe it was just convenient to have a scapegoat.’

Jens rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Enemies? None that I can think of, not that sort.’ His face brightened. ‘But that must mean you’re letting me go.’

‘Sorry, you’re still not out of the woods.’

‘But you just said that you—’

‘The Police Chief won’t let you go until we have an alibi. So I’m asking you to rack your brain. Was there anyone, anyone at all, who saw you after you said goodbye to the ambassador and before you arrived home? Was there anyone in reception when you left the office or when you caught the taxi? Did you stop by a kiosk, anything?’

Jens rested his forehead on his fingertips. Harry lit a cigarette.

‘Hell, Harry! You’ve made my mind go blank with all that video stuff. I can’t think straight.’ He groaned and slapped his hand on the table. ‘Do you know what happened last night? I dreamt that I killed the ambassador. That we walked out of the main entrance and drove to a motel where I stabbed him in the back with a big butcher’s knife. I tried to stop, but I wasn’t in control of my body, it was like I was trapped inside a robot and it kept stabbing, and I . . .’

He paused.

Harry said nothing and let him have all the time he needed.

‘The thing is I hate being locked up,’ Jens said. ‘I’ve never been able to stand it. My father used to . . .’

He swallowed and clenched his right hand. Harry saw his knuckles whiten. Jens was almost whispering as he went on.

‘If someone had come in with a confession saying I could leave if I signed it I’m hard put to know what I would have done.’

Harry got up. ‘Keep trying to remember something. Now that we’ve sorted out the video evidence perhaps you can think a bit more clearly.’

He went towards the door.

‘Harry?’

Harry wondered what it was that made people so talkative when you turned your back on them.

‘Yeah?’

‘Why do you think I’m innocent when all the others appear to think the opposite?’

Harry answered without turning. ‘First of all, because we don’t have anything like evidence against you, only a threadbare motive and the absence of an alibi.’

‘And second?’

Harry smiled and twisted his head. ‘Because I thought you were a sack of shit the first time I clapped eyes on you.’

‘And?’

‘I’m crap at judging people. Have a nice day.’

Bjarne Møller opened one eye, squinted at the clock on the bedside table and wondered who on earth would consider six o’clock in the morning a convenient time to ring.

‘I know what the time is,’ Harry said before his boss had a chance. ‘Listen, there’s a guy you have to check out for me. No specifics right now, just gut instinct.’

‘Gut instinct?’

‘Yes, a hunch. I think we’re after a Norwegian, and so the selection is somewhat reduced.’

Møller cleared his throat and brought up a mouthful of mucus. ‘Why a Norwegian?’

‘Well, on Molnes’s jacket and the knife that killed him we found some reindeer fat. And the angle of the stab wound suggests it was a relatively tall person. So not your typical Thai by the looks of things.’

‘OK, but couldn’t you have waited with this, Hole?’

‘Of course,’ Harry said. There was a pause.

‘So why didn’t you?’

‘Because there are five detectives and a Police Chief here waiting for you to get your arse in gear, boss.’

Møller rang back two hours later.

‘What was it exactly that made you ask us to check out this guy, Hole?’

‘Well, I reckoned that someone who used reindeer fat to protect the knife must have been in northern Norway. Then I remembered a couple of pals who came back from military service in Finnmark with these big Sami knives they’d bought themselves. Ivar Løken was in Defence for several years and he was stationed in Vardø. Furthermore, I have an idea he knows how to use a knife.’

‘That could be true,’ Møller said. ‘What else do you know about him?’

‘Not a lot. Tonje Wiig thinks he’s been shunted into a siding until he retires.’

‘Well, there’s nothing on him in the criminal database, but . . .’ Møller paused.

‘But?’

‘We had a file on him anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘His name appeared on the screen, but I couldn’t get into his file. An hour later I had a phone call from the Defence High Command in Huseby wondering why I was trying to access his file.’

‘Wow.’

‘They told me to send a letter if I wanted any information about Ivar Løken.’

‘Forget it.’

‘I’ve already forgotten, Harry. We won’t get anywhere.’

‘Did you talk to Hammervoll in Vice?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Needless to say, there were no files on Norwegian paedophiles in Thailand.’

‘Thought so. Bloody data protection.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with that.’

‘Oh?’

‘We started a database a few years ago, but we didn’t have the resources to keep it up to date. Just too many of them.’

When Harry had rung Tonje Wiig to arrange a meeting as swiftly as possible, she had insisted that they meet in the Authors’ Lounge at the Oriental Hotel for tea.

‘Everyone goes there,’ she said.

Harry discovered that ‘everyone’ was white, wealthy and well dressed.

‘Welcome to the best hotel in the world, Harry,’ Tonje chirruped from the depths of an armchair in the lobby.

She was wearing a blue cotton skirt and holding a straw hat in her lap, which, along with all the other people in the lobby, lent the place a touch of old, carefree colonialism.

They withdrew to the Authors’ Lounge, were served tea and nodded politely to the other white people, who seemed to think that being white was reason enough to greet one another. Harry clinked the porcelain nervously.

‘Not your style, Harry?’ Tonje sipped her tea while mischievously peering over the top.

‘I’m trying to work out why I’m smiling at Americans in golf gear.’

She laughed. ‘Oh, a slightly cultivated environment can’t hurt.’

‘When were checked trousers cultivated?’

‘Hm, cultivated people then.’

Harry could hear that the rural town of Frederikstad hadn’t done much for the woman sitting opposite him. He thought of Sanphet, the old chauffeur who had changed into an ironed shirt and long trousers and had sat out in the boiling hot sun so that his visitors wouldn’t be embarrassed by how simply he lived. That was more cultivated than anything he had seen so far among the foreigners in Bangkok.

Harry asked what Tonje knew about paedophiles in Thailand.

‘Only that Thailand attracts a lot of them. As I’m sure you remember, a Norwegian was caught literally with his trousers down in Pattaya last year. Norwegian newspapers published a charmingly arranged photo of three small boys pointing him out for the police. The man’s face was blanked out, not the boys’ faces though. In the English-language version of
Pattaya Mail
it was the other way round. And they used the man’s full name in the leader, after which they consistently called him ‘the Norwegian’. Tonje shook her head. ‘People here who hadn’t heard of Norway before suddenly knew that Oslo was the capital because it said that Norwegian authorities wanted him flown home to Oslo. Everyone wondered why on earth they wanted him back. Here, he would have been locked up for a long time.’

‘If the sentences are so strict here, why are there so many paedophiles?’

‘The authorities want Thailand to get rid of its reputation as an Eldorado for paedophiles. It damages legitimate tourism. But inside the police force it isn’t a high priority because arresting foreigners only brings trouble.’

‘So the result is that the authorities work against one another?’

Tonje burst into a beaming smile, which Harry realised was not intended for him but one of the ‘everyone’ passing behind him.

‘Yes and no,’ she said. ‘Some cooperate. The authorities in Sweden and Denmark have, for example, come to an agreement with the Thai government whereby they can station police officers here to investigate specific cases where Swedes or Danes are involved. They have also passed laws that Swedish and Danish nationals can be convicted in their respective countries for abuse of minors in Thailand.’

‘And Norway?’

Tonje shrugged. ‘We don’t have an agreement yet. I know that Norwegian police have pushed for an equivalent arrangement, but I don’t think they quite appreciate the extent of what is going on in Pattaya and Bangkok. Have you seen the children walking around selling chewing gum?’

Harry nodded. The area around the go-go bars in Patpong was teeming with them.

‘That’s the code. The chewing gum means they’re for sale.’

Harry realised with a shudder that he’d bought a packet of Wrigley’s off a barefoot, black-eyed boy, who had looked terrified, but Harry had put that down to the crowds and the noise.

‘Ivar Løken, the man you pointed out at the funeral reception. Ex-military, you said? Can you tell me any more about his interest in photography? Have you seen any of his pictures?’

‘No, but I’ve seen his equipment and that’s impressive enough.’

Her cheeks reddened a touch as it occurred to her why Harry had involuntarily smiled.

‘And these trips to Indochina, do you know for certain that’s where he went?’

‘For certain? Why would he lie?’

‘Any idea why he might?’

She folded her arms as if she thought it had turned chilly. ‘Not really. How was the tea?’

‘I have to ask you a favour, Tonje.’

‘And that is?’

‘An invitation to dinner.’

She looked up in surprise.

‘If you have time,’ he added.

She gave a mischievous smile again. ‘My appointments book is at your disposal, Harry. Any time at all.’

‘Fine.’ Harry sucked his teeth. ‘I was wondering if you could invite Ivar Løken to dinner tonight between seven and ten.’

She knew how to maintain a mask well enough to avoid too much embarrassment. After he had explained the background, she even agreed. Harry clinked the porcelain a bit more, said he had to be going and made a sudden, clumsy exit.

32

Saturday 18 January

ANYONE CAN BREAK
into a house – all you do is stick a jemmy in the door frame next to the lock and lean against it until the splinters fly. But breaking in, with the emphasis on ‘in’ and not ‘breaking’, in such a way that the occupant is not aware he has had uninvited guests, is an art. An art which Sunthorn had mastered to perfection, it transpired.