Harry Hole 02 - Cockroaches (31 page)

‘Needless to say, time is against us. It’s equally needless to say the odds are against the girl. Seventy per cent of kidnaps of this kind end in the victim being killed.’ He tried to say this in as neutral a tone as possible, and he avoided their eyes in the sure knowledge that everything he thought and felt was written in his.

‘So where do we start?’ Liz asked.

‘We begin by eliminating,’ Harry said. ‘Eliminating where she
isn’t
.’

‘Well, as long as he has the girl they’re unlikely to let him cross any international borders,’ Løken said. ‘Or check in at a hotel.’

Liz agreed. ‘He’s probably somewhere they can hide for a long time.’

‘Is he alone?’ Harry asked.

‘Klipra isn’t associated with any of the crime families,’ Liz said. ‘The kind of organised crime he’s involved in doesn’t mess around with kidnapping. Finding someone to take care of an opium slave like Jim Love isn’t that hard. But kidnapping a white girl, the daughter of an ambassador . . . Anyone he tried to hire would have checked it all out before agreeing. They would’ve known the whole police force would be on them if they took the job.’

‘So you think he’s alone?’

‘Like I said, he isn’t in one of the families. Inside those families there are loyalties and traditions. But Klipra would employ contractors he could never trust a hundred per cent. Sooner or later they would discover why he wanted the girl and they might use it against him. The fact that he got rid of Jim Love suggests he will stop at nothing to protect his identity.’

‘OK, let’s assume he’s operating solo. Where would he hide her?’

‘Loads of places,’ Liz said. ‘His companies must own a lot of properties, and some of those have to be empty.’

Løken coughed loudly, caught his breath again and swallowed.

‘I’ve suspected for ages that Klipra has a secret love nest. On occasion he’s taken a couple of boys with him in the car and has stayed over till the following morning. I’ve never managed to track down the place; it’s certainly not registered anywhere. But it’s obvious it must be somewhere he’s left in peace, somewhere not too far from Bangkok.’

‘Could we find any of the boys and ask them?’ Harry said.

Løken shrugged and looked at Liz.

‘It’s a big city,’ she said. ‘In our experience these boys disappear like dew in the morning sun the minute we start looking for them. Besides, we’d have to involve lots of other people.’

‘OK, forget it,’ Harry said. ‘We can’t risk Klipra getting wind of what we’re doing.’

Harry tapped a pen rhythmically against the edge of the table. To his irritation he noticed that ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’ was still buzzing round his head.

‘So, to summarise, we assume Klipra has carried out this kidnap on his own and that he is in an out-of-the-way place a drive away from Bangkok.’

‘What do we do now?’ Løken asked.

‘I’m off to Pattaya,’ Harry said.

He was on the margins of the expat scene. Harry hadn’t felt he was very important in the case, just another Norwegian seeking better weather. Roald Bork looked the same as he had at the funeral, same lively blue eyes and gold chain on display. He was standing at the gate as Harry swung round the big Toyota 4×4 in front of his house. The dust settled on the gravel while Harry struggled with the seat belt and the ignition key. As usual, he was unprepared for the heat that hit him as he opened the door and instinctively gasped for breath. There was a salty taste to the air, which told him the sea was right behind the low ridges.

‘I heard you coming up the drive,’ Bork said. ‘Quite a vehicle, that one.’

‘I rented the biggest they had,’ Harry said. ‘I’ve learned it gives you a kind of priority. You need it with the nutters here driving on the left.’

Bork laughed. ‘Did you find the new motorway I told you about?’

‘Yes, I did. Except it wasn’t quite finished, so they’d closed it with sandbags in a couple of places. But everyone drove over them, and I followed suit.’

‘That sounds about right,’ Bork said. ‘It’s not quite legal and not quite illegal. Is it any wonder we fall in love with this country?’

They removed their shoes and went into the house. The cold, cooling stone tiles stung Harry’s bare feet. In the living room there were pictures of Fridtjof Nansen, Henrik Ibsen and the Norwegian royal family. In one a boy was sitting on a chest of drawers squinting into the camera. He must have been about ten and had a football under his arm. Documents and newspapers were tidied into neat piles on the dining-room table and piano.

‘I’ve been trying to organise my life a little,’ Bork said. ‘Find out what happened and why.’

He pointed to one of the piles. ‘Those are the divorce papers. I stare at them and try to remember.’

A girl came in carrying a tray. Harry tasted the coffee she poured and looked up at her quizzically when he realised it was ice cold.

‘Are you married, Hole?’ Bork asked.

Harry shook his head.

‘Good. Keep well away. Sooner or later they’ll try to get one up on you. I have a wife who ruined me and an adult son who is trying to do the same. And I can’t work out what I did to them.’

‘How did you end up here?’ Harry asked, taking another sip. Actually, it wasn’t that bad.

‘I was doing a job for Televerket here while they were installing a couple of switchboards for a Thai telephone company. After the third trip I never went back.’

‘Never?’

‘I was divorced and had everything I needed here. For a while I seriously believed I longed for a Norwegian summer, fjords and the mountains and, well, you know, all that stuff.’ He nodded in the direction of the pictures on the wall, as if they could fill in the rest. ‘Then I went to Norway twice, but both times I was back within a week. I couldn’t stand it, yearned to be here from the moment I set foot on Norwegian soil. I’ve realised now that I belong here.’

‘What do you do?’

‘I’m a soon-to-be-retired telecommunications consultant, I take the occasional job, but not too many. I try to work out how long I’ve got left and how much I’m going to need in that period. I don’t want to leave one single øre for the vultures.’ He laughed and waved a hand over the divorce papers as if wafting away an evil smell.

‘What about Ove Klipra? Why’s he still here?’

‘Klipra? Hm, I suppose he has a similar tale to tell. Neither of us had very good reasons for returning.’

‘Klipra probably had very good reasons not to.’

‘All that gossip is absolute rubbish. If Ove had been up to that sort of thing I would never have had anything to do with him.’

‘Are you sure?’

Bork’s eyes flashed. ‘There have been a couple of Norwegians who have come here for the wrong reasons. As you know I’m a kind of senior figure in the Norwegian circle in town, and we feel a certain responsibility for what our compatriots do here. Most of us are decent, and we’ve done whatever had to be done. These bloody paedophiles have destroyed the reputation of Pattaya to such an extent that when people ask us where we live many have begun to answer with districts like Naklua and Jomtien.’

‘What exactly is “whatever had to be done”?’

‘Let me put it this way, two have gone back home and one unfortunately never made it.’

‘He jumped out of a window?’ Harry suggested.

Bork gave a resounding laugh. ‘No, we don’t go that far. But it’s probably the first time the police have received an anonymous tip-off in Thai with a Nordland accent.’

Harry smiled. ‘Your son?’ He motioned towards the photograph on the chest of drawers.

Bork looked a bit taken aback, but nodded.

‘Looks like a nice lad.’

‘He was then.’ Bork smiled with sad eyes and repeated himself: ‘He was.’

Harry looked at his watch. The drive from Bangkok had taken almost three hours, but he had made his way like a learner driver until he had relaxed a little in the final kilometres. Perhaps he would make it back in just over two. He took three photos from his folder and placed them on the table. Løken had blown them up to 24 × 30 centimetres to achieve the full shock effect.

‘We think Ove Klipra has a hideaway near Bangkok. Will you help us?’

43

Wednesday 22 January

SIS SOUNDED HAPPY
on the phone. She had met a boy, Anders. He had just moved into Sogn, in the same corridor, and was one year younger than her.

‘He’s got glasses too. But that doesn’t matter because he’s dead good-looking.’

Harry laughed and visualised Sis’s new catch.

‘He’s absolutely crazy. He thinks they’ll let us have children together. Just imagine that.’

Harry just imagined that and knew there could be some difficult conversations in the future. But right now he was glad Sis sounded so content.

‘Why are you sad?’ The question came with an intake of breath, as a natural extension of the news that their father had been to visit her.

‘Am I sad?’ Harry asked, fully aware that Sis could always diagnose his state of mind better than he could himself.

‘Yes, you’re sad about something. Is it the Swedish girl?’

‘No, it’s not Birgitta. There is something that’s bothering me now, but it will soon be OK. I’ll sort it out.’

‘Good.’

There was a rare silence, as Sis wasn’t speaking. Harry said they’d better ring off.

‘Harry?’

‘Yes, Sis?’

He could hear her preparing herself.

‘Do you think we could forget all that now?’

‘All what?’

‘You know, the man. Anders and I, we . . . we’re having such a good time. I don’t want to think about it any more.’

Harry fell silent. Then he took a deep breath. ‘He attacked you, Sis.’

Tears were in her voice at once. ‘I know. You don’t have to tell me again. I don’t want to think about it any more, I’m telling you.’

She sniffed, and Harry felt his chest constrict.

‘Please, Harry?’

He could feel he was squeezing the phone. ‘Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it, Sis. Everything’s going to be fine.’

They had been lying in the elephant grass for almost two hours and waiting for the sun to set. A hundred metres away, at the edge of a copse, was a small house built in traditional Thai style with bamboo and wood, and featuring an open patio in the middle. There was no gate, only a little gravel path to the main door. Out front was what looked like a colourful birdcage on a pole. It was a
phra phum
, a shrine to the protective spirit of a place.

‘The owner has to appease the spirits so that they don’t move into the house,’ Liz said, stretching her legs. ‘So you have to offer them food, incense, cigarettes and so on to keep them happy.’

‘And that’s enough?’

‘Not in this case.’

They hadn’t heard or seen any signs of life. Harry tried to think about something else, not about what might be inside. It had only taken them an hour and a half by car from Bangkok, but still it was as though they had arrived in another world. They had managed to park behind a hut by the road, beside a pigpen, and had found a path leading up the steep, tree-clad slope to the plateau where Roald Bork had explained that Klipra’s little house was situated. The wood was verdant, the sky blue, and birds of all colours of the rainbow flew over Harry as he lay on his back listening to the silence. At first he had thought he had cotton wool in his ears before realising what it was: he hadn’t had any silence around him since he left Oslo.

When darkness fell the silence was over. It had begun with scattered scraping and humming, like a symphony orchestra tuning their instruments. Then the concert started with quacking and cackling and soared in a crescendo when the howling and loud, piercing shrieks from the trees joined the orchestra.

‘Have all these animals always been here?’ Harry asked.

‘Don’t ask me,’ Liz said. ‘I’m a city kid.’

Harry felt something cold brush against his skin and pulled his hand away.

Løken chuckled. ‘It’s just the frogs out on their evening promenade,’ he said. And, sure enough, soon there were frogs all around them apparently jumping wherever the mood took them.

‘Well, so long as it’s only frogs that’s fine,’ Harry said.

‘Frogs are food too,’ Løken said. He pulled a black hood over his head. ‘Where there are frogs there are also snakes.’

‘You’re kidding!’

Løken shrugged.

Harry had no desire to know the truth, but couldn’t stop himself from asking. ‘What sort of snakes?’

‘Five or six different varieties of cobra, a green adder, a Russell’s viper plus a good many more. Watch out. They say of the thirty most common varieties in Thailand twenty-six are poisonous.’

‘Shit. How do you know if they’re poisonous?’

Løken gave him his poor-recruit look again. ‘Harry, bearing the odds in mind, I think you should just assume they’re all poisonous.’

It was eight o’clock.

‘I’m ready,’ Liz said impatiently and checked for the third time that her Smith & Wesson 650 was loaded.

‘Frightened?’ Løken asked.

‘Only of the Police Chief finding out what’s going on before we get this done,’ she said. ‘Do you know the average life expectancy of a traffic cop in Bangkok?’

Løken laid a hand on her shoulder.

‘OK, let’s go.’ Liz ran head down through the tall grass and disappeared into the darkness.

Løken studied the house through his binoculars while Harry covered the front with the elephant rifle Liz had requisitioned from the police arms depot, along with a gun, a Ruger SP
101
. He wasn’t used to wearing a calf holster, but shoulder holsters aren’t worn where jackets are an impractical item of clothing. A full moon was high in the sky and gave him enough light to make out the contours of the windows and doors.

Liz flashed her torch once, the signal that she was in position under one window.

‘Your turn, Harry,’ Løken said when he noticed him hesitate.

‘Shit, did you have to mention the snakes?’ Harry said, checking he had a knife in his belt.

‘Don’t you like them?’

‘Well, the ones I’ve met made a very bad first impression.’

‘If you get bitten, make sure you catch the snake, so you’re given the right antidote. Then it doesn’t matter if you’re bitten a second time.’