Harry Hole 02 - Cockroaches (3 page)

He stopped and looked at Møller, who was wondering why he felt an instinctive lack of goodwill towards the diplomat with the aggressive chin.

‘We could put together a team with—’

‘No team, Møller. Too conspicuous. Besides, your Commissioner thinks that a whole division would hardly be conducive to good relations with the local police. One man.’

‘One man?’

‘The Commissioner has already suggested a name, and we consider it a good suggestion. Now we’d like to hear your opinion of him. According to conversations the Police Commissioner has had with his colleague in Sydney, he did remarkable work down there last winter in connection with the Inger Holter murder.’

‘I read the story in the papers,’ Askildsen said. ‘Impressive stuff. Surely he has to be our man?’

Bjarne Møller swallowed. So the Police Commissioner had suggested they should send Harry Hole to Bangkok. He had been summoned to assure them that Hole was the best the force had to offer, the perfect man for the job.

He glanced round the table. Politics, power and influence. This was a game he couldn’t begin to understand, but he realised that in some way or other it would work out in his favour, that whatever he said now would have consequences for his career. The Police Commissioner had stuck her neck out by suggesting a name. Probably one of the others had then asked to have Hole’s qualifications endorsed by his immediate superiors. He looked at his boss and tried to interpret her expression. Of course, everything might turn out fine with Hole. And if he advised them not to send him, would that not cast the Commissioner in an unfortunate light? He would be asked to suggest an alternative and then
his
head would be the one on the block if the officer concerned messed up.

Møller looked at the painting above the Police Commissioner: Trygve Lie, the UN Secretary General, gazed down at him imperiously. A politician as well. Through the windows he saw the roofs of the apartment buildings in the low winter light, Akershus fortress and a weathercock shivering in the icy gusts on top of the Continental Hotel.

Bjarne Møller knew he was a competent police officer, but this was a different game, and he didn’t know the rules. What would his father have advised him to do? Well, Officer Møller had never had to deal with politics, but he had known what was important if he was to be taken at all seriously and had forbidden his son to start Police College until he had completed the first part of a law course. He had done as his father said, and after the graduation ceremony his father had kept clearing his throat, overcome with emotion, while slapping his son on the back until he’d had to ask him to stop.

‘A great suggestion,’ Bjarne Møller heard himself say in a loud, clear voice.

‘Good,’ Torhus said. ‘The reason we wanted an opinion so quickly is that, of course, all this is urgent. He’ll have to drop everything he’s working on; he’s leaving tomorrow.’

Well, perhaps it’s just the sort of job Harry needs right now, Møller hoped.

‘Sorry we have to deprive you of such an important man,’ Askildsen said.

PAS Bjarne Møller had to stop himself bursting into laughter.

3

Wednesday 8 January

THEY FOUND HIM
at Schrøder’s in Waldemar Thranes gate, a venerable old watering hole located at the crossroads where Oslo East meets Oslo West. It was more old than venerable, to be honest. The venerable part was largely down to the authorities’ decision to put a preservation order on the smoke-filled brown rooms. But the order did not include the clientele: old boozers, a hunted and extinction-threatened bunch; eternal students; and jaded charmers long past their sell-by date.

The two officers spotted their man sitting under a painting of Aker Church as the draught from the door allowed a brief glimpse through the curtain of smoke. His blond hair was cropped so short the bristles stood up straight and the three-day beard on the lean, marked face had a streak of grey even though he could hardly be older than his mid-thirties. He sat alone, straight-backed, wearing his reefer jacket, as if about to leave any minute. As if the beer in front of him on the table was not a source of pleasure but a job that had to be done.

‘They said we would find you here,’ said the older of the two and sat down opposite him. ‘I’m Waaler.’

‘See the guy sitting in the corner?’ Hole said without looking up.

Waaler turned and saw a scrawny old man gazing into his glass of red wine while rocking backwards and forwards. He seemed to be freezing cold.

‘They call him the last Mohican.’

Hole raised his head and beamed. His eyes were like blue-and-white marbles behind a network of red veins, and they focused on Waaler’s shirt.

‘Merchant seaman,’ he said, his diction meticulous. ‘Used to be lots of them here a few years back apparently, but now there are hardly any left. He was torpedoed twice during the war. He thinks he’s immortal. Last week, after closing time, I found him sleeping in a snowdrift down in Glückstadsgata. The streets were empty, it was pitch black and minus eighteen. When I’d shaken some life into him he just looked at me and told me to go to hell.’ He laughed.

‘Listen, Hole—’

‘I went over to his table last night and asked if he remembered what had happened – I mean, that I’d saved him from freezing to death. Do you know what he said?’

‘Møller wants to see you, Hole.’

‘He said he was immortal. “I can put up with being an unwanted merchant seaman in this shit country,” he said. “But it’s a sorry business when even St Peter doesn’t want anything to do with me.” Did you hear? “Even St Peter”—’

‘We’ve got orders to take you to the station.’

Another beer landed on the table in front of Hole with a thud.

‘Let’s settle up now, Rita,’ he said.

‘Two hundred and eighty,’ she answered without needing to check her slips of paper.

‘Jesus Christ,’ mumbled the younger officer.

‘That’s fine, Rita.’

‘Oh, thanks.’ She was gone.

‘Best service in town,’ Harry explained. ‘Sometimes she can spot you even when you haven’t been waving both arms in the air.’

The skin on Waaler’s forehead tightened and a blood vessel appeared, like a blue, knobbly worm.

‘We haven’t got the time to sit here and listen to your drunken ramblings, Hole. I suggest you give the last beer a miss . . .’

Hole had already put the glass carefully to his lips and started drinking.

Waaler leaned forward and tried to keep his voice low. ‘I know about you, Hole. And I don’t like you. I think you should have been booted out of the force years ago. Guys like you make people lose respect for the police. But that’s not why we’re here now. We’ve come to take you with us. The PAS is a nice man. Perhaps he’ll give you another chance.’

Hole belched and Waaler leaned back.

‘Another chance to do what?’

‘To show what you can do,’ the younger officer said with a boyish smile.

‘I’ll show you what I can do.’ Hole smiled, put the glass to his mouth and tipped his head back.

‘Pack it in, Hole!’ Waaler’s cheeks flushed as they watched Hole’s Adam’s apple rise and fall beneath his unshaven chin.

‘Happy?’ Hole asked, putting the empty glass down in front of him.

‘Our job—’

‘I couldn’t give a shit about your job.’ Hole buttoned up his reefer jacket. ‘If Møller wants something he can ring me or wait until I’m at work tomorrow. Now I’m going home and I hope I won’t see your faces for the next twelve hours. Gentlemen . . .’ Harry raised himself to his full 192 centimetres and lurched to the side.

‘You arrogant prick,’ Waaler said, rocking back in his chair. ‘You bloody loser. If only the reporters who wrote about you after Australia had known you haven’t got the balls—’

‘The balls to do what, Waaler?’ Hole was still smiling. ‘Lock up drunken sixteen-year-olds because they’ve got Mohicans?’

The younger officer glanced at Waaler. Rumours had been doing the rounds at Police College last year that some young punks had been hauled in for drinking beer in public places and beaten in the cells with oranges packed in wet towels.

‘You’ve never understood
esprit de corps
, Hole,’ Waaler said. ‘You just think about yourself. Everyone knows who was driving the car in Vinderen and why a good policeman smashed his skull against a fence post. Because you’re a drunk, Hole, and you drove while under the influence. You should be bloody glad the force swept the facts under the carpet. Had they not been concerned about the family and the force’s reputation—’

The younger officer accompanying Waaler was learning something new every day. This afternoon, for example, he learned it was very stupid to rock on a chair while insulting someone, because you are totally defenceless if the insulted party steps over and lands a straight right between the eyes. As customers often fell over at Schrøder’s there was no more than a couple of seconds’ silence before the buzz of conversation resumed.

He helped Waaler to his feet as he glimpsed the tails of Hole’s jacket disappearing through the door. ‘Wow, not bad after eight beers, eh?’ he said, but shut up when he met Waaler’s gaze.

Harry’s legs strode out casually along the icy pavement of Dovregata. His knuckles didn’t hurt; it would be early tomorrow morning before either pain or regret came knocking.

He didn’t drink during working hours. Though he had done it before, and Dr Aune contended that every new relapse started where the old one finished.

The white-haired, roly-poly Peter Ustinov clone had laughed so much his double chin shook as Harry explained to him that he was keeping away from his old foe Jim Beam and confining himself to beer. Because he didn’t like beer much.

‘You’ve been in a mess, and the moment you open the bottle you’re there again. There’s no halfway house, Harry.’

Well. He was struggling home on two legs, generally managing to undress himself and getting himself to work the next day. It hadn’t always been like that. Harry called it a halfway house. He just needed a few knockout drops to sleep, that was all.

A woman said hello from under a black fur hat as she passed. Was it someone he knew? Last year lots of people had said hello, particularly after the interview on TV when Anne Grosvold had asked him how it felt to shoot a serial killer.

‘Well, better than sitting here and answering questions like that one,’ he had said with a crooked smile, and it had been the hit of the spring, the most repeated quote this side of one politician’s defence of an agricultural policy: ‘Sheep are nice animals.’

Harry inserted the key into the lock of his flat in Sofies gate. Why he had moved to Bislett escaped him. Perhaps it had been because his neighbours in Tøyen had started looking at him strangely and keeping their distance, which at first he had construed as showing respect.

Fine, the neighbours here left him in peace, though they would appear in the corridor to check everything was OK if, on rare occasions, he should slip on a step and roll back down to the nearest landing.

The backward rolls hadn’t started until October, after he had hit a brick wall over Sis’s case. Then the air had been knocked out of him and he had started dreaming again. And he knew only one way to keep the dreams at arm’s length.

He had tried to pull himself together, take Sis to the cabin in Rauland, but she had become very withdrawn since the assault, and she didn’t laugh as easily as before. So he had rung his father a couple of times, although the conversations hadn’t been very long, just long enough to indicate that his dad wanted to be left in peace.

Harry closed the door to his flat, shouted that he was home and nodded with satisfaction when there was no answer. Monsters come in all shapes and sizes, but so long as they weren’t waiting for him in the kitchen when he came home there was a chance he would have an undisturbed night’s sleep.

4

Thursday 9 January

THE COLD SNAP
came so suddenly that when Harry stepped out of the door he involuntarily gasped for breath. He looked up at the reddening sky between the houses and opened his mouth to release the taste of gall and Colgate.

In Holbergs plass he caught the tram rattling down Welhavensgate. He found a seat and opened the
Aftenposten
. Another paedophilia case. There had been three of them over recent months, all Norwegians caught red-handed in Thailand.

The leader reminded readers of the Prime Minister’s promise during his election campaign that he would intensify investigation of sexual crimes, including those involving Norwegians abroad, and demanded to know when the public would see any results.

Secretary of State Bjørn Askildsen, from the Prime Minister’s office, commented that they were working with the Thai government to further investigative powers.

‘This is urgent!’ the
Aftenposten
editor wrote. ‘People expect to see some action. It’s not right that a Christian minister can permit this outrage to continue.’

‘Come in!’

Harry opened the door and looked straight into Bjarne Møller’s yawning mouth. He was leaning back in his chair with his long legs sticking out from under the desk.

‘There you are. I was expecting you yesterday, Harry.’

‘So I was told.’ Harry sat down. ‘I don’t work when I’m drunk. Or vice versa. It’s a kind of principle I have.’ This was intended to sound ironic.

‘A police officer is a police officer twenty-four hours a day, Harry, sober or not. I had to persuade Waaler not to report you, you know.’

Harry shrugged, indicating that he’d said all he had to say on the subject.

‘OK, Harry, we won’t discuss that now. I’ve got a job for you. A job which in my opinion you don’t deserve, but which I’m going to give you anyway.’

‘Would it make you happy if I said I don’t want it?’

‘Cut the Philip Marlowe stuff, Harry. It doesn’t suit you,’ Møller replied brusquely. Harry smirked. He knew the PAS liked him. ‘I haven’t even told you what it is.’

‘I assume from the fact that you send a car to get me in my free time it’s not to put me on traffic duty.’