Harry Hole 02 - Cockroaches (6 page)

‘Tonje Wiig?’

‘That’s it. She was hard-faced right up to the moment we turned over the body to have him identified.’

Harry studied the ambassador. Had he been a good-looking man? A man who, apart from the dreadful suit and a couple of rolls of fat around his stomach, could make the heart of a young, female chargé d’affaires beat faster? The suntanned skin had taken on a sallow hue and the blue tongue seemed to be trying to force its way between the teeth.

Harry sat down on a chair and had a look around. When a person dies their appearance changes quickly, and he had seen more than enough corpses to know that he didn’t get much from staring at them. Atle Molnes had taken with him any secrets his personality might have revealed and all that remained was an empty, abandoned husk.

Harry pushed the chair closer to the bed. The two young officers leaned over him.

‘What can you see?’ Crumley asked.

‘I see a Norwegian lech who happened to be the ambassador and therefore has to have his reputation protected for king and country.’

She glanced up in surprise, and examined Harry more closely.

‘No matter how good the a/c you can’t cover the stench,’ he said. ‘But that’s my problem. As for this guy here . . .’ Harry grasped the ambassador’s jaw. ‘Rigor mortis. He’s rigid, but the rigidity has begun to give, which is normal after three days. His tongue’s blue, but the knife would suggest not from suffocation. Has to be checked.’

‘
Has
been,’ Crumley said. ‘The ambassador had been drinking red wine.’

Harry mumbled something.

‘Molnes left his office at lunchtime,’ she continued, ‘and when the woman found him it was nearly 11 p.m. Our doctor says he died somewhere between 4 and 10 p.m., so that narrows it down a bit.’

‘Between four and ten? That’s six hours.’

‘Correct, Detective.’ Crumley crossed her arms.

‘Well.’ Harry looked up at her. ‘In Oslo we usually determine the time of death with a margin of twenty minutes either way for bodies that have been found after a few hours.’

‘That’s because you live at the North Pole. Here, at thirty-five degrees, a body’s temperature doesn’t fall much. The time is worked out according to rigor mortis, and so it’s fairly approximate.’

‘What about livor mortis? There should be discoloration after around three hours.’

‘Sorry. As you can see, the ambassador liked sunbathing, so we can’t tell.’

Harry ran his index finger up the suit material where the knife had entered. A grey, Vaseline-like deposit gathered on his nail.

‘What’s this?’

‘The weapon was obviously greased. Samples have been sent for analysis.’

Harry rifled through the pockets and pulled out a worn, brown wallet. It contained a 500-baht note, a Ministry ID card and a photo of a smiling girl in what appeared to be a hospital bed.

‘Did you find anything else on him?’

‘Zip.’ Crumley had removed her cap to waft away the flies. ‘We checked what he had and left it alone.’

Harry loosened the belt, pulled down the trousers and turned him on his stomach again. Then he pulled up the jacket and shirt. ‘Look. Some of the blood ran down his back.’ He lifted the elastic of the Dovre underpants. ‘And down between his buttocks. Which means he wasn’t stabbed while lying in bed. He was standing. By measuring how far the blade went in and determining the angle we can work out the murderer’s height.’

‘Assuming the murderer was standing on the same level as the victim when he or she struck,’ Crumley added. ‘The victim could also have been stabbed while he was on the floor and the blood ran down when he was moved to the bed.’

‘Then there would have been blood on the carpet,’ Harry said, pulling up the trousers, fastening the belt, turning and looking Liz in the eye. ‘And you wouldn’t have needed to speculate, you would have known for certain. Your forensics people would have found fibres from the carpet all over his suit, wouldn’t they.’

Her gaze didn’t deviate, but Harry knew he had exposed her little test. She nodded, and he turned back to the corpse.

‘One victimological detail might confirm he was expecting a female visitor.’

‘Yes?’

‘See the belt? It was fastened two notches up from the worn line before I loosened it. Middle-aged men with burgeoning waistlines often pull their stomachs in when they meet younger women.’

It was hard to say whether they were impressed. The officers shifted from one foot to the other and their stony young faces betrayed nothing. Crumley bit off a chunk of nail and spat it out between pursed lips.

‘So here’s the minibar.’ Harry opened the door of the little fridge. Singha, Johnnie Walker and Canadian Club miniatures, a bottle of white wine. Nothing appeared to have been touched.

‘What else have we got?’ Harry turned to the two young officers.

They exchanged glances and then one pointed out the car in the drive.

‘The car.’

They went outside, where there was a dark blue Mercedes of recent vintage bearing diplomatic plates. One of the police officers opened the driver’s door.

‘Key?’ Harry asked.

‘It was in the jacket pocket of . . .’ The officer nodded towards the motel room.

‘Fingerprints?’

The young man gave his superior a resigned look. She coughed.

‘Obviously we’ve checked the key for prints, Hole.’

‘I wasn’t asking
if
you’d taken prints, but what you found.’

‘His. Otherwise we’d have told you at the outset.’

Harry bit his tongue.

The seats and floor of the Mercedes were strewn with rubbish. Harry noticed some magazines, cassettes, empty cigarette packets, a Coke can and a pair of sandals.

‘What else have you found?’

Nho took out a list and read it out.

‘Stop,’ Harry said. ‘Could you repeat the last item?’

‘Coupons for betting on horse races, sir.’

‘The ambassador obviously liked to gamble now and then,’ Crumley said. ‘Popular sport in Thailand.’

‘And what’s this?’

Harry had leaned over the driver’s side and picked up a small capsule partly buried under the carpet between the seat adjuster and the floor mat.

The officer looked down at his list, but had to give up.

‘Liquid Ecstasy comes in capsules like that,’ said Crumley, who had stepped closer to see.

‘Ecstasy?’ Harry shook his head. ‘Middle-aged Christian Democrats might fuck around, but they do
not
take E.’

‘We’ll have to get it checked out,’ Crumley said. Harry could see from her face that she wasn’t best pleased to have missed the capsule.

‘Let’s have a look in the back,’ he said.

The boot was as clean and tidy as the inside was messy.

‘A man of orderly habits,’ Harry said. ‘The women of the family reigned supreme inside the car, but he didn’t let them touch the boot.’

A well-equipped toolbox glinted in the light from Crumley’s torch. It was spotless; only plaster on the tip of a screwdriver revealed that it had been used.

‘Bit more victimology, folks. My guess is Molnes was not a practical man. This toolbox has never been near a car engine. At most, the screwdriver has been used to hang up a family photo.’

A mosquito applauded by his ear. Harry hit out and felt his wet skin was cold to the touch. The heat hadn’t abated even if the sun had gone down. Now the wind had dropped and it felt as if moisture was trickling from the ground beneath their feet and condensing the air so that it was almost drinkable.

Beside the spare tyre was the jack, apparently also unused, and a thin, brown leather case of the kind you expect to find in a diplomat’s car.

‘What’s in the case?’ Harry asked.

‘It’s locked,’ Crumley said. ‘Because the car is, officially speaking, embassy territory and therefore not under our jurisdiction we haven’t attempted to open it. But now that Norway is represented maybe we can . . .’

‘Sorry, I don’t have diplomatic status,’ Harry said, lifting the case out of the boot and placing it on the ground. ‘But I can state that the case is no longer on Norwegian territory, so I would suggest you open it while I go to reception and speak to the motel owner.’

Harry sauntered across the car park. His feet were swollen after the flight, a drop of sweat rolled down the inside of his shirt, tickling him, and he was desperate for a drink. Apart from that, it didn’t feel too bad to be on a serious case again. It was a long time since his last job. He noticed that the ‘m’ had gone out.

Wang Lee, Manager
said the business card the man behind the counter passed Harry, presumably a gentle hint that he should try again another day. The bony man in the flowery shirt had sleep in the corners of his eyes and looked as if he definitely did not want anything to do with Harry right now. He had started to flick through a pile of papers and grunted when he glanced up to see Harry still standing there.

‘I can see you’re a busy man,’ Harry said. ‘So I suggest we do this as quickly as possible. I know I’m a foreigner and I’m not from your country—’

‘Not Thai. Chinese,’ he heard, accompanied by another grunt.

‘Well, then, you’re also a foreigner. The point is—’

From behind the counter came a couple of gasps which might have been scornful laughter. The motel owner had at any rate opened his mouth.

‘Not foreigner. Chinese. We make Thailand work. No Chinese, no business.’

‘Fine. You’re a businessman, Wang. So let me make you a business deal. You run a brothel here and you can flick through papers as much as you like, but that’s how it is.’

Wang shook his head firmly. ‘No prostitutes. Motel. Rent rooms.’

‘Relax, I’m only interested in the murder, it’s not my job to lock up pimps. Unless I do it off my own bat. Hence the business deal. Here in Thailand no one checks people like you out, there are simply too many of you. Reporting you to the police isn’t enough, either. I’m guessing you can pay a few baht in a brown envelope to avoid being bothered by that kind of thing. That’s why you’re not particularly afraid of us.’

The motel owner repeated the head-shaking.

‘No money. Illegal.’

Harry smiled. ‘Last time I looked, Thailand was third in the world corruption table. Please be nice and don’t treat me like an idiot.’

Harry ensured his voice was lowered. Threats generally work best when delivered in a neutral key.

‘Your problem, and mine, however, is that the guy who was found in the motel room is a diplomat from my country. If I have to report back that we suspect he died in a brothel it suddenly becomes a political issue and your friends in the police cannot help you. The authorities will feel obliged to close this place and haul you off to prison. To show goodwill, to show they’re maintaining law and order, right?’

It was impossible to see from the expressionless face whether he had hit the nail on the head or not.

‘On the other hand, if I report back that the woman had arranged to meet the man, and the motel was a random choice . . .’

The man looked at Harry. He blinked, pinching his eyes as if he had a speck of dust in them. Then he turned, pulled aside a curtain that hid a door opening and waved for Harry to follow. Behind the curtain was a little room with a table and two chairs, and the man motioned Harry to sit down. He put a cup in front of Harry and poured from a teapot. There was such a strong aroma of peppermint that it made his eyes smart.

‘None of girls want to work so long as body’s there,’ Wang said. ‘How quickly can you move it?’

Businessmen are businessmen the world over, Harry thought, lighting a cigarette.

‘Depends how quickly we can get to the bottom of what went on here.’

‘The man came here about nine at night and said he wanted room. He flicked through menu and said he wanted Dim, he just needed rest first. Told me to say when she was here. I said he had to pay hourly rate anyway. He said fine and took key.’

‘The menu?’

The man passed him something which did indeed resemble a menu. Harry leafed through. There were pictures of young Thai girls in nurse uniforms, in fishnet stockings, in tight leather corsets with a whip, in schoolgirl uniforms and plaits, and even in police uniforms. Beneath the pictures, under the heading VITAL STATISTICS was each girl’s age, price and background. Harry noticed that all of them claimed they were between eighteen and twenty-two. Prices ranged from one to three thousand baht and almost all the girls had apparently completed a language course and worked as nurses.

‘Was he alone?’ Harry asked.

‘Yes.’

‘No one else in the car?’

Wang shook his head.

‘How can you be so sure of that? The Mercedes has tinted windows and you were sitting in here.’

‘I usually go out and check. Perhaps he has friend with him. Then they have to pay for double room.’

‘I see. Double room, double price?’

‘Not double price.’ Wang showed his teeth again. ‘Cheaper to share.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Don’t know. Man drove car to number 120, where he is now. It’s at back, so I can’t see it in darkness. I called Dim and she came and waited. After a while I sent her in to him.’

‘And how was Dim dressed? As a tram conductor?’

‘No, no, no.’ Wang flipped through to the back page of the menu and proudly showed the photo of a young Thai girl wearing a short dress covered in silver sequins, white skates and a big smile. She was curtsying with her ankles crossed and her arms to the sides, as though she had just performed a successful free programme. Her face was dotted with red freckles.

‘And that’s supposed to be . . .?’ Harry said in disbelief, reading the name under the photo.

‘Yes, yes, right. Tonya Harding. The one who killed other American girl, pretty one.’

‘I don’t think she actually—’

‘Dim can be her too if you like . . .’

‘No, thank you,’ Harry said.

‘It’s very popular. Especially with Americans. She can cry, if you like.’ Wang ran fingers down his cheeks.

‘She found him in the room with a knife in his back. What happened after that?’

‘Dim ran here screaming.’

‘Wearing skates?’

Wang gave Harry a reproachful look. ‘Skates come on after panties come off.’