Nemesis (44 page)

‘Well, you can go with them, Alf. I’m caught up, as you can see.’

Harry listened intently until the footsteps had distanced themselves. ‘Anna Bethsen.’ He heard himself whispering. ‘Can you check if she personally collected all the keys?’

‘I don’t need to. She
must
have done.’

Harry leaned over the counter. ‘Can you check it anyway?’

The boy gave a deep sigh and disappeared into the back room. He returned with a file and flicked through. ‘See for yourself,’ he said. ‘There, there and there.’

Harry recognised the delivery forms. They were identical to the ones he had signed himself when he came for Anna’s key. But all the forms were signed by Anna. He was about to ask where the form with his own signature was when his eyes fell on the dates.

‘It says here the last key was collected back in August,’ he said. ‘But that’s a long time before I was here and . . .’

‘Yes?’

Harry stared up into the air. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ve found what I needed.’

Outside, the wind had picked up. Harry rang from one of the telephone boxes in Valkyrie plass.

‘Beate?’

Two seagulls headed into the wind above the tower of the Seamen’s School and hovered there. Beneath the gulls lay Oslo fjord, which had gone an ominous green-black hue, and Ekeberg, where the two people on the bench were tiny dots.

Harry had finished talking about Anna Bethsen. About the time they met. About the last evening, some of which he recalled. About Raskol. Beate had finished telling him they had managed to trace the laptop. It had been bought three months ago from the Expert shop
by the Colosseum cinema. The guarantee had been made out to Anna Bethsen. And the mobile phone connected to it was the one Harry maintained he had lost.

‘I hate the scream of gulls,’ Harry said.

‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’

‘At this very moment – yes.’

Beate stood up from the bench. ‘I shouldn’t be here, Harry. You shouldn’t have rung me.’

‘But you are here.’ Harry gave up trying to light his cigarette in the wind. ‘It means you believe me. Doesn’t it?’

Beate’s response was to fling out her arms angrily.

‘I don’t know any more than you do,’ Harry said. ‘Not even for certain that I didn’t shoot Anna.’

The gulls peeled off and performed an elegant roll in the surge of wind.

‘Tell me what you know one more time,’ Beate said.

‘I know this guy has somehow obtained keys to Anna’s flat so he got in and out on the night of the murder. When he left, he took Anna’s laptop with him and my mobile phone.’

‘What was your mobile phone doing in Anna’s flat?’

‘It must have fallen out of my jacket pocket during the evening. I was a bit animated, as I told you.’

‘And then?’

‘His original plan was simple. Drive to Larkollen after the murder and plant the key he’d used in Arne Albu’s chalet. Attached to a keyring with the initials AA so that no one would be in any doubt. When he found my mobile phone, though, he suddenly realised he could tweak the plan a bit. Make it look like I had first of all murdered Anna and then rigged it so the blame fell on Albu. Then he used my mobile phone to connect to a server in Egypt and started sending me e-mails in such a way that it was impossible to trace the sender.’

‘And if he were traced, it would lead to . . .’

‘Me. However, I wouldn’t have discovered anything was wrong
until I received the next bill from Telenor. Probably not even then, since I don’t read them that carefully.’

‘Or stop your subscription when you lose your phone.’

‘Mm.’ Harry jumped up from the bench and began to pace to and fro. ‘What’s more difficult to understand is how he got into my cellar storeroom. You didn’t find any signs of a break-in and no one in our block would have admitted an intruder. In other words, he must have had a key. In fact, all he would need is one key since we use one system key to fit the main door, loft, cellar and flat, but it’s not easy to get hold of one. And the key to Anna’s flat was also a system key . . .’

Harry stopped and looked south. A green freighter with two large cranes was on its way up the fjord.

‘What are you wondering?’ Beate asked.

‘I’m wondering whether to ask you to run a check on some names for me.’

‘I’d rather not, Harry. I shouldn’t even be here, as I said.’

‘And I’m wondering where you got the bruises from.’

Her hand went straight to her throat. ‘Training. Judo. Anything else you were wondering?’

‘Yes, I was wondering if you could give this to Weber.’ Harry pulled out the glass wrapped in a cloth from his jacket pocket. ‘Ask him to check it for fingerprints and compare them with mine.’

‘Has he got yours?’

‘Forensics has the fingerprints of all Crime Scene officers. And ask him to analyse what was in the glass.’

‘Harry . . .’ she began in an admonitory tone.

‘Please?’

Beate sighed and took the bundle.

‘Låsesmeden AS,’ Harry said.

‘And what do you mean by that?’

‘If you change your mind about checking names, you can run through the staff list at Låsesmeden. It’s a small company of locksmiths.’

She put on a resigned expression.

Harry shrugged. ‘If you give Weber the glass, I’m more than happy.’

‘Where do I contact you when Weber has the results?’

‘Do you really want to know?’ Harry smiled.

‘I want to know as little as possible. You contact me, OK?’

Harry pulled his jacket tighter around him. ‘Shall we go?’

Beate nodded, but didn’t move. Harry raised his eyebrows.

‘What he wrote,’ she said. ‘The bit about only the most vengeful surviving. Do you think it’s true, Harry?’

Harry stretched out his legs in the short bed in the caravan. The noise of the cars in Finnmarkgata reminded Harry of his childhood in Oppsal, lying in bed and listening to the traffic. When they were with Grandpa in the silence of Åndalsnes in the summer it was the only thing he longed for: to return to the regular, soporific drone of cars, only broken by a motorbike, a noisy exhaust or a distant police siren.

There was a knock at the door. It was Simon. ‘Tess would like you to tell her a goodnight story tomorrow, too,’ he said, stepping inside. Harry had told her how the kangaroo had learned to jump and had been rewarded with a goodnight hug by all the children.

The two men smoked in silence. Harry pointed to the photograph on the wall. ‘That’s Raskol and his brother, isn’t it? Stefan, Anna’s father?’

Simon nodded.

‘Where’s Stefan now?’

Simon shrugged, not really interested, and Harry knew the subject was taboo.

‘They look like good friends in the photo,’ Harry said.

‘They were like Siamese twins, you know. Pals. Raskol did two prison stretches for Stefan.’ Simon laughed. ‘I can see you’re taken aback, my friend. It’s the tradition. Can you understand? It’s an honour to take a brother’s or a father’s punishment, you know.’

‘The police don’t exactly feel the same way.’

‘They couldn’t tell Raskol and Stefan apart. Gypsy brothers. Not easy for Norwegian police.’ He grinned and offered Harry a cigarette. ‘Especially when they were wearing masks.’

Harry took a drag on his cigarette and took a shot in the dark. ‘What came between them?’

‘What do you think?’ Simon opened his eyes open wide in a dramatic gesture. ‘A woman, of course.’

‘Anna?’

Simon didn’t answer, but Harry knew he was getting warm. ‘Was the reason Stefan didn’t want anything to do with Anna because she had met a
gadjo
?’

Simon stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. ‘It wasn’t Anna, but Anna had a mother. Goodnight,
Spiuni
.’

‘Mm. Just one last question?’

Simon paused.

‘What does
spiuni
mean?’

Simon chuckled. ‘It’s an abbreviation of
spiuni gjerman
– German spy. But relax, my friend, there’s no offence meant. It’s even used as a boy’s name in some places.’

Then he closed the door and was gone.

The wind had dropped and all you could hear now was the drone of traffic in Finnmarkgata. Yet Harry was unable to fall asleep.

Beate lay in bed listening to the cars outside. As a child she had often fallen asleep to his voice. The stories he told were not in any book; they were created as he spoke. They were never quite the same even if they occasionally started in the same way and they involved the same people: two wicked thieves, a clever daddy and his brave daughter. And they always ended well with the thieves behind lock and key.

Beate could never recall seeing her father read. When she grew up, she realised her father suffered from something they called dyslexia.
But for that, he would have been a lawyer, her mother had said.

‘Just as we want you to be.’

But the stories hadn’t been about lawyers, and when Beate told her she had been accepted at Police College, her mother had cried.

Beate awoke with a start. Someone had rung the bell. She groaned and swung her legs out of bed.

‘It’s me,’ the voice in the intercom said.

‘I told you I didn’t want to see you any more,’ Beate said, shivering in her thin dressing gown. ‘Go away.’

‘I’ll go when I’ve apologised. It wasn’t me. I’m not like that. I just . . . lost control. Please, Beate. Only five minutes.’

She hesitated. Her neck was still stiff and Harry had noticed the bruises.

‘I have a present with me,’ the voice said.

She sighed. She would have to meet him some time whatever happened. Better to sort things out here than at work. She pressed the button, tightened her dressing gown around her and waited in the doorway listening to his footsteps coming up the stairs.

‘Hi,’ he said, on seeing her, and smiled. A big, white David Hasselhoff smile.

T
OM
W
AALER PASSED HER THE PRESENT, TAKING GREAT CARE
not to touch her since she still had the frightened body language of an antelope, which predators can smell. Instead he walked past her into the sitting room, and sat himself on the sofa. She followed and remained standing. He looked around. He found himself in young women’s flats at regular intervals and they were all furnished more or less in the same way. Personal but unoriginal, snug but dull.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ he asked. She did as he requested.

‘A CD,’ she said, puzzled.

‘Not
any
CD,’ he said. ‘
Purple Rain
. Put it on and you’ll understand.’

He studied her as she switched on the pathetic all-in-one radio she and others like her called a stereo. Frøken Lønn wasn’t exactly good-looking. Sweet in her way, though. Body was a bit uninspiring, not many curves to get hold of, but slim and fit. She had liked what he did with her and exhibited a healthy enthusiasm. At least the first few times when he had taken it a bit
piano
. Yes, in fact, it had lasted more than just the one time. Surprising really because she wasn’t his type at all.

Then one evening he had given her the full treatment. And she – in common with most women he met – had not been entirely on the same wavelength. Which only made the whole thing even more appealing to him, but generally it meant that was the last time he heard from them. Which was no skin off his nose. Beate should be happy; it could have been a lot worse. A few evenings before, out of the blue, she had told him where she had seen him for the first time.

‘In Grünerløkka,’ she had said. ‘It was evening and you were sitting in a red car. The streets were full of people and your window was rolled down. It was winter time. Last year.’

He had been pretty amazed. Especially since the only evening he could recall being in Grünerløkka last winter was the Saturday evening they had expedited Ellen Gjelten into the beyond.

‘I remember faces,’ she had said with a triumphant smile when she saw his reaction. ‘
Fusiform gyrus
. It’s the part of your brain which recognises the shape of faces. Mine is abnormal. I should be doing turns at a fair.’

‘I see,’ he said. ‘What else can you remember?’

‘You were talking to someone.’

He had supported himself on his elbows, leaned over her and stroked her larynx with his thumb. Felt the throb of her pulse; she was like a startled leveret. Or was it his own pulse he had felt?

‘I suppose you can remember the other face, too, can you?’ he had asked, his brain already in overdrive. Did anyone know she was here tonight? Had she kept her mouth shut about their relationship, as he had asked? Did he have any bin bags under the sink?

She had turned to him with a puzzled smile: ‘What do you mean?’

‘Would you recognise the other person if you saw a photograph?’

She had given him a long look. Kissed him circumspectly.

‘Well?’ he had said, bringing his other hand up from under the duvet.

‘Mm. Mm, no. He had his back to me.’

‘But you could remember the clothes he was wearing? If you were asked to identify him, I mean?’

She had shaken her head. ‘The
fusiform gyrus
only recognises faces. The rest of my brain is absolutely normal.’

‘But you remember the colour of the car I was in?’

She had laughed and snuggled up to him. ‘That must mean I liked what I saw, didn’t I?’

He had surreptitiously removed his hand from her neck.

Two evenings later he had let her have the whole show. And she hadn’t liked what she had been forced to see. Or hear. Or feel.

The opening lines of ‘When Doves Cry’ blasted from the speakers.

She turned down the volume.

‘What do you want?’ she asked, sitting down in the armchair.

‘As I said. To apologise.’

‘You’ve done that now. So let’s draw a line under that, shall we?’ She made a show of yawning. ‘I was on my way to bed, Tom.’

He could feel his anger mounting. Not the red mist which distorted and obscured, but the white heat which glowed and brought clarity and energy. ‘OK, let’s get down to business. Where’s Harry Hole?’

Beate laughed. Prince let out a falsetto scream.

Tom closed his eyes, felt himself feeling stronger and stronger from the fury streaming through his veins like assuaging glacial water. ‘Harry rang you the evening he disappeared. He forwarded e-mails to you. You’re his contact, the only person he can trust for the moment. Where is he?’