Nemesis (13 page)

‘She starts whispering here,’ Beate said.

Bjelke immediately shut up and concentrated intently on the minimalist lip movements on the screen. Beate stopped the recording before the shot was fired.

‘Right,’ Bjelke said. ‘Once more.’

And afterwards: ‘Again.’

Then: ‘One more time please.’

After seven times, he nodded that he had seen enough.

‘I don’t understand what she means,’ Bjelke said. Harry and Beate exchanged glances. ‘But I think I know what she says.’

Beate half-ran down the corridor to keep up with Harry.

‘He’s reckoned to be the country’s foremost expert in the field,’ she said.

‘That doesn’t help,’ Harry said. ‘He said himself he wasn’t sure.’

‘But what if she did say what Bjelke thought?’

‘It doesn’t make sense. He must have missed a negative.’

‘I don’t agree.’

Harry came to a halt and Beate almost ran into him. With an alarmed expression, she looked up at one wide-open eye.

‘Good,’ he said.

Beate was perplexed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Disagreeing is good. Disagreeing means that you’ve seen or understood something even though you’re not exactly sure what. And there’s something I haven’t understood.’ He set off again. ‘Let’s assume you’re right. Then we can consider where this takes us.’ He stopped in front of the lift and pressed the button.

‘Where are you going now?’ Beate asked.

‘To check some details. I’ll be back in less than an hour.’

The lift doors opened and PAS Ivarsson stepped out.

‘Aha!’ He beamed. ‘The master sleuths on the trail. Anything new to report?’

‘The point about parallel groups is that we don’t have to report in so often. Isn’t it?’ Harry said, sidestepping him and walking into the lift. ‘If I understood you and the FBI correctly, that is.’

Ivarsson’s broad smile and gaze held. ‘We obviously have to share key information.’

Harry pressed the button for the first floor, but Ivarsson placed himself between the doors: ‘Well?’

Harry shrugged. ‘Stine Grette whispers something to the robber before she is shot.’

‘Uhuh?’

‘We believe she whispers:
It’s my fault
.’

‘It’s my fault?’

‘Yes.’

Ivarsson’s brow furrowed. ‘That can’t be right, can it? It would make more sense if she had said
It’s
not
my fault
. I mean, it isn’t her fault the branch manager took six seconds too long putting the money in the holdall.’

‘I don’t agree,’ Harry said, looking conspicuously at his watch. ‘We’ve received assistance from one of the country’s leading experts in the field. Beate can fill you in on the details.’

Ivarsson was leaning against one lift door, which was impatiently pushing at his back. ‘So she forgets a negative in her confusion then. Is that all you have? Beate?’

Beate flushed. ‘I’ve just started studying the video of the bank robbery in Kirkeveien.’

‘Any conclusions?’

Her eyes wandered from Ivarsson to Harry and back again. ‘Not for the time being.’

‘Nothing then,’ Ivarsson said. ‘Perhaps you would be pleased to know that we have identified nine suspects we’ve brought in for
questioning. And we have a strategy for finally getting something out of Raskol.’

‘Raskol?’ Harry asked.

‘Raskol Baxhet, the king of the sewer rats himself,’ Ivarsson said, hooking his fingers into his belt loops. He breathed in and hitched his trousers up with a cheery grin: ‘But Beate can probably fill you in on the details later.’

H
ARRY WAS AWARE THAT, ON CERTAIN MATTERS, HE WAS
small-minded. Take Bogstadveien, for example. He didn’t like Bogstadveien. He didn’t know why; perhaps it was because in this street, paved with gold and oil, the Mount Happy of Happyland, no one smiled. Harry didn’t smile himself, but he lived in Bislett, wasn’t paid to smile and right now had a few good reasons for not smiling. However, that didn’t mean that Harry, in common with most Norwegians, didn’t appreciate being smiled
at.

Inwardly, Harry tried to excuse the boy behind the counter in the 7-Eleven. He probably hated his job, he probably lived in Bislett, too, and it had started to piss down with rain again.

The pale face with the fiery red pimples cast a bored eye over his police ID card: ‘How should I know how long the skip’s been outside?’

‘Because it’s green and it covers half of your view of Bogstadveien,’ Harry said.

The boy groaned and put his hands on hips which barely held up his trousers. ‘A week. Sort of. Hey, queue of people waiting behind you, you know.’

‘Mm. I had a look inside. It’s almost empty apart from a few bottles and newspapers. Do you know who ordered it?’

‘No.’

‘I see you have a surveillance camera over the counter. Looks as if it might just catch the skip?’

‘If you say so.’

‘If you still have the film from last Friday I would like to see it.’

‘Ring tomorrow. Tobben’s here.’

‘Tobben?’

‘Shop manager.’

‘I suggest you ring Tobben now and get permission to give me the tape, then I won’t detain you any longer.’

‘You have a look for it,’ he said and the spots went redder. ‘I haven’t got time to start searching for some video now.’

‘Oh,’ Harry said without making a move. ‘What about after closing time?’

‘We’re open twenty-four hours,’ the boy said, rolling his eyes.

‘That was a joke,’ Harry said.

‘Right. Ha ha,’ said the boy with the somnambulant voice. ‘You going to buy sumfin or what?’

Harry shook his head and the boy looked past him: ‘Till’s free.’

Harry sighed and turned to the queue crowding towards the counter. ‘The till is not free. I am from Oslo Police.’ He held up his ID. ‘And this person is arrested for being unable to pronounce
th
.’

Harry could be small-minded on certain matters. At this particular moment, though, he was extremely pleased with the response. He appreciated being smiled at.

But he didn’t like the smile which appeared to be part of the professional training of preachers, politicians and undertakers. They smile with their
eyes
while speaking and it gave herr Sandemann of Sandemann Funeral Directors a sincerity which together with the temperature in the coffin storeroom under Majorstuen church made
Harry shudder. He surveyed the locale. Two coffins, a chair, a wreath, a funeral director, a black suit and a comb-over.

‘She looks wonderful,’ Sandemann said. ‘Peaceful. Restful. Dignified. Are you a member of the family?’

‘Not exactly.’ Harry showed his police card in the hope that sincerity was reserved for closest family. It wasn’t.

‘Tragic that such a young life should pass on in this way.’ Sandemann smiled, pressing his palms together. The funeral director’s fingers were unusually thin and crooked.

‘I would like to have a look at the clothes the deceased was wearing when she was found,’ Harry said. ‘At the office they said you had brought them here.’

Sandemann nodded, fetched a white plastic bag and explained that he had done this in case parents or siblings turned up, and he could dispose of them. Harry searched in vain for pockets in the black dress.

‘Was there anything specific you were after?’ Sandemann asked in an innocent tone of voice as he peered over Harry’s shoulder.

‘A house key,’ Harry said. ‘You didn’t find anything when you . . .’ He stared at Sandemann’s crooked fingers. ‘. . . undressed her?’

Sandemann closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘The only thing under the skirt was herself. Apart from the picture in the shoe, of course.’

‘The picture?’

‘Yes. Curious, isn’t it? What customs they have. It’s still in her shoe.’

Harry lifted a black, high-heeled shoe out of the bag and caught a flash of her in the doorway when he arrived: black dress, black shoes, red mouth.

The picture was a dog-eared photograph of a woman and three children on a beach. It looked like a holiday snap from somewhere in Norway with large, smooth rocks in the water and tall pine trees on the hills in the background.

‘Has anyone from her family been here?’ Harry asked.

‘Only her uncle. Together with one of your colleagues, naturally.’

‘Naturally?’

‘Yes, I understood he was serving a sentence.’

Harry didn’t answer. Sandemann leaned forward and bent his back in such a way that the little head withdrew between his shoulders making him resemble a vulture: ‘I wondered what for.’ The whisper sounded like a hoarse birdcall: ‘Since he won’t even be allowed to attend the funeral, I mean.’

Harry cleared his throat. ‘May I see her?’

Sandemann seemed disappointed, but gestured civilly with his hand to one of the coffins.

As usual, it struck Harry how a professional job could enhance a corpse. Anna really did seem at peace. He touched her forehead. It was like touching marble.

‘What is the necklace?’ Harry asked.

‘Gold coins,’ Sandemann said. ‘Her uncle brought it.’

‘And what’s this?’ Harry lifted up a wad of paper held together by a thick, brown elastic band. It was a stack of hundred-kroner notes.

‘A custom they have,’ Sandemann said.

‘Who are these
they
you keep talking about?’

‘Didn’t you know?’ Sandemann formed his thin, wet lips into a smile. ‘She was a gypsy.’

All the tables in the canteen at Police HQ were occupied by colleagues in animated conversation. Except for one. Harry walked over to it.

‘You’ll get to know people by and by,’ he said. Beate looked up at him with incomprehension, and he realised they might have more in common than he had thought. He sat down and placed a video cassette in front of him. ‘This is taken from the 7-Eleven shop diagonally opposite the bank on the day of the robbery. Plus a recording of the Thursday before. Could you check it for anything interesting?’

‘See if the bank robber’s on it, you mean?’ Beate mumbled with
her mouth full of bread and liver paste. Harry studied her packed lunch.

‘Well, we can only hope,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ she said and her eyes filled with water as she struggled to swallow the food. ‘In 1993, the Kreditkasse in Frogner was held up. The robber had taken plastic bags with the Shell logo on to put the money in, so we checked the surveillance camera at the nearest Shell station. Turned out he had been in to buy bags ten minutes before the job. Wearing the same clothes, but without a mask. We arrested him half an hour later.’

‘
We
, eight years ago?’ Harry asked, not thinking.

Beate’s face changed colour like traffic lights. She snatched a slice of bread and tried to hide behind it. ‘My father,’ she muttered.

‘I apologise. I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ came the swift response.

‘Your father . . .’

‘Was killed,’ she said. ‘It’s a long time ago now.’

Harry sat listening to the sounds of chewing while studying his hands.

‘Why did you take a tape of the week before the robbery?’ Beate asked.

‘The skip,’ Harry said.

‘What about it?’

‘I rang the skip company and asked. It was ordered on a Thursday by one Stein Søbstad in Industrigata and delivered to the agreed site directly outside the 7-Eleven the day after. There are two Stein Søbstads in Oslo and both deny having ordered a skip. My theory is that the robber had it placed there to cut off the view through the window so that the camera won’t film him crossing the road as he leaves the bank. If he had been scouting around the 7-Eleven the same day as he had ordered the skip, we might see someone looking into the camera and out of the window towards the bank, checking angles and so on.’

‘With a bit of luck. The witness outside the 7-Eleven says the
robber was still masked when he crossed the road, so why would he go to all the bother with a skip?’

‘The plan might have been to take off the balaclava while crossing the road.’ Harry sighed. ‘I don’t know, I only know there is something about that green skip. It has been there for a week and apart from the odd passer-by throwing refuse in it, no one has used it.’

‘OK,’ Beate said, taking the video and standing up.

‘One more thing,’ Harry said. ‘What do you know about this Raskol Baxhet?’

‘Raskol?’ Beate frowned. ‘He was a kind of mythical figure until he gave himself up. If the rumours are true, in one way or another he’s had a hand in ninety per cent of the bank robberies in Oslo. My guess is he could finger everyone who has committed a bank robbery here over the last twenty years.’

‘So that’s what Ivarsson is using him for. Where’s he banged up?’

Beate thrust a thumb over her shoulder. ‘A-Wing over there.’

‘In Botsen?’

‘Yes. And he’s refused to utter a word to any policeman for the duration of his sentence.’

‘So what makes Ivarsson think he can succeed?’

‘He’s finally found something Raskol wants that he can use to negotiate. In Botsen they say it’s the only thing Raskol has asked for since he arrived. Permission to go to the funeral of a relative.’

‘Really?’ Harry said, hoping his face didn’t give anything away.

‘She’ll be buried in two days’ time, and Raskol has lodged an urgent plea with the prison governor to be allowed to attend.’

After Beate had gone, Harry remained at the table. The lunch break was over and the canteen was thinning out. It was supposed to be light and snug and was run by a national catering company, so Harry preferred to eat in town. But he suddenly remembered this was where he had danced with Rakel at the Christmas party; it was precisely here he had decided to make a move on her. Or was it vice versa? He could still feel the curve of her back on his hand.

Rakel.

In two days Anna would be buried, and no one had the slightest doubt that she had died by her own hand. He was the only person who had been there and could have contradicted them, but he couldn’t remember a thing. So why couldn’t he let sleeping dogs lie? He had everything to lose and nothing to gain. If for no other reason, why couldn’t he forget the case for their sake, for his and Rakel’s?

Harry put his elbows on the table and cradled his face in his hands.