Nemesis (54 page)

‘Perhaps she didn’t want to be your wife any longer,’ Harry said. ‘Was that what happened?’

Trond’s finger tightened round the trigger and his eyes met Harry’s above Beate’s shoulder. Inside, Harry instinctively began to count. ‘One-thousand-and-one, one-thousand-and-two . . .’

‘She thought she could just leave me,’ Trond said in a low voice. ‘Me – who had given her everything.’ He laughed. ‘For a guy who had never done anything for anyone, who thought life was a birthday party and all the presents were for him. Lev didn’t steal. He was just confused by the prepositions
from
and
to
.’ Trond’s laughter was carried away on the wind like the crumbs of alphabet biscuits.

‘Like from Stine to Trond,’ Harry said.

Trond blinked hard with both eyes. ‘She said she loved him.
Loved
. She didn’t even use those words on the day we married.
Fond of
, she said. She was
fond of
me. Because I was so good to her. But she loved the boy who dangled his legs from a roof and waited for applause. That was what it was about for him. Applause.’

There were fewer than six metres between them and Harry could see the knuckles on Trond’s left hand whiten as he held the gun barrel.

‘But not for you, Trond. You didn’t need any applause, did you. You enjoyed your triumphs in silence. Alone. Like that time by the bridge.’

Trond pushed out his lower lip. ‘Own up, you believed me, didn’t you.’

‘Yes, we believed you, Trond. We believed every word you said.’

‘So where did I slip up?’

‘Beate has checked Trond and Stine Grette’s bank accounts for the last two quarters,’ Harry said.

Beate held up a pile of papers for the others in the room. ‘They’ve both transferred money to Brastour, the travel agency,’ she said. ‘The agency has confirmed that in March of this year Stine Grette booked a trip to São Paulo for June, and Trond Grette followed a week later.’

‘So far, that tallies with what Trond Grette told us,’ Harry said. ‘The strange thing is that Stine told Klementsen, the branch manager, she was going on holiday to Greece. Also that Trond Grette booked and bought his ticket the same day he left. Pretty bad planning if you’re going on holiday together to celebrate ten years of marriage, isn’t it?’

The room was so quiet they could hear the refrigerator motor on the other side of the corridor switch itself on.

‘Suspiciously reminiscent of a wife who has lied to everyone about where she’s going, and an already sceptical husband who has checked her bank statement and been unable to make Brastour square with a trip to Greece. Who then rang Brastour, found the name of the hotel where his wife was staying and followed her to bring her back.’

‘And so?’ Ivarsson said. ‘Did he find her with a darkie?’

Harry shook his head. ‘I don’t think he found her at all.’

‘We’ve checked and she didn’t stay at the hotel she booked,’ Beate said. ‘Trond returned on an earlier flight.’

‘Furthermore, Trond took out thirty thousand kroner on his bank card in São Paulo. At first, he said he’d bought a diamond ring, then that he’d met Lev and given him the money because he was broke. I’m fairly sure, though, that neither is true. I believe the money was for a service for which São Paulo is even more famous than jewellery.’

‘And that is?’ Ivarsson asked, clearly irritated by the silence, which had become unbearable.

‘Contract murder.’

Harry had felt like dragging it out even longer, but a glance from Beate told him he was already being melodramatic. ‘When Lev came back to Oslo this autumn, it was for his own money. He wasn’t broke at all and had no intention of robbing any bank. He had returned to take Stine with him to Brazil.’

‘Stine?’ Møller exclaimed. ‘His brother’s wife?’

Harry nodded. The detectives present exchanged glances.

‘And Stine was supposed to move to Brazil without telling anyone?’ Møller continued. ‘Not her parents, not her friends? Without even giving notice to her employers?’

‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘when you’ve decided to spend your life with a bank robber wanted by both the police and your colleagues you don’t announce your plans and leave a forwarding address. There was only one person she had told, and that was Trond.’

‘The last person she should have told,’ Beate added.

‘She probably thought she knew him, after being with him for thirteen years.’ Harry walked over to the window. ‘The sensitive but kind, safe accountant who loved her so dearly. Let me speculate a little about what happened afterwards.’

Ivarsson sniffed. ‘And what do you call what you’ve been doing so far?’

‘When Lev comes to Oslo, Trond gets in touch. Says they’re adults and brothers so they should be able to talk about things. Lev is relieved and happy. But he doesn’t show his face around town, it’s too risky, so they agree to meet in Disengrenda while Stine’s at work. Lev goes and is well received by Trond, who says he had been sad at first, but now he was basically over that and happy for them. He opens a bottle of Coke for each of them and they drink and talk about practical details. Trond has Lev’s secret address in d’Ajuda so he can forward post, back-payments and so on to Stine. Lev doesn’t realise he has just given Trond the final details he needs to implement a plan which Trond had initiated when he was in São Paulo.’

Harry saw Weber slowly nodding his head.

‘Friday morning. D-day. In the afternoon Stine is flying to London with Lev and from there to Brazil the following morning. The trip has been booked through Brastours. The suitcases are packed and ready at home, but she and Trond go to work as usual. At two Trond leaves work and goes to Focus in Sporveisgata. He arrives, pays for the squash court he has booked, but says he hasn’t found a partner.
That’s the first alibi in place: a registered payment at 14.34. Then he says he’ll do some training in the fitness room instead and goes into the changing room. There are lots of people moving in and out at that time. He locks himself in the toilet with the bag, changes into the boiler suit with something over it, probably a long coat, waits until he can be sure the people he saw in the toilet have gone, puts on his sunglasses, takes the bag and passes quickly and unnoticed out of the changing room through the reception area. I would guess he walks towards Stenspark and then up Pilestredet by the building site where they clock off at three. He nips in, tears off his coat, puts on a folded balaclava he has hidden under his cap. Then he walks up the hill and turns left down Industrigata. At the Bogstadveien crossroads he goes into the 7-Eleven. He’d been there a couple of weeks earlier to check the camera angles. And the skip he ordered is in position. The scene is set for the diligent police officers he obviously knows will check all the video footage in the shops and petrol stations around. So he puts on this little show for us: we don’t see his face but we do see
very
clearly a bottle of Coke he’s holding in his bare hand and drinking from. He puts it in a plastic bag, so we’re all convinced the fingerprints have not been wiped off by the rain and places it in the green skip he knows won’t be collected for a good while. He must have had a fairly high opinion of our efficiency, and we nearly lost the evidence, but he got lucky – Beate drove like crazy and we managed it: to give Trond Grette a watertight alibi by acquiring the final, incontrovertible piece of evidence against Lev.’

Harry broke off. The faces in front of him expressed mild perplexity.

‘The bottle of Coke was the one Lev had drunk from in Disengrenda,’ Harry said. ‘Or somewhere. Trond had taken it for precisely this purpose.’

‘I’m afraid you’ve forgotten something, Hole,’ Ivarsson whinnied. ‘You saw yourself that the bank robber was holding the bottle in his bare hands. If it was Trond Grette, it must be his prints on the bottle.’

Harry motioned towards Weber.

‘Glue,’ said the experienced detective.

‘I beg your pardon?’ The Chief Superintendent turned to Weber.

‘An old trick used by bank robbers. You spread a little glue over your fingertips, let it harden and, bingo, no prints.’

The Chief Superintendent shook his head. ‘But where has this accountant, as you call him, learned these tricks?’

‘He was the little brother of one of the most professional bank robbers Norway has seen,’ Beate said. ‘He knew Lev’s methods and style inside out. Amongst other things, Lev kept video recordings of his raids at his home in Disengrenda. Trond had taught himself his brother’s techniques so well that even Raskol was deceived into thinking he recognised Lev Grette. On top of that, there is the physical similarity of the two brothers, which meant that computer manipulation of the videos showed the robber
could
have been Lev.’

‘Shit!’ Halvorsen exclaimed involuntarily. He ducked and sent a fearful glance at Bjarne Møller, but Møller was sitting with mouth wide open, staring blankly in front of him as if a bullet had passed through his head.

‘You haven’t put down the gun, Harry. Can you explain?’

Harry attempted to breathe regularly even though his heart was running amok. Oxygen to the brain, that was crucial. He tried not to look at Beate. The wind puffed up thin, blonde strands of her hair. Muscles in the thin neck were straining and her shoulders had begun to tremble.

‘Elementary,’ Harry said. ‘You’ll shoot us both. You have to give me a better deal than that, Trond.’

Trond laughed and rested his cheek against the green butt of the gun. ‘What do you say to this deal, Harry? You’ve got twenty-five seconds to think through the alternatives and put down the weapon.’

‘The usual twenty-five?’

‘Correct. I suppose you recall how quickly the time went. Think fast, Harry.’

‘Do you know what put the idea in my head about Stine knowing the robber?’ Harry shouted. ‘They were standing too close. Much closer than you and Beate now. It’s odd, but, even in life-and-death situations, people respect others’ intimate spaces if they can. Isn’t that strange?’

Trond placed the barrel under Beate’s chin and raised her face. ‘Beate, would you be so kind as to count for us?’ He was using the theatrical tone again. ‘From one to twenty-five. Not too fast and not too slow.’

‘I was wondering about something,’ Harry said. ‘What did she say before you shot her?’

‘Would you really like to know, Harry?’

‘Yes, I would.’

‘Beate has two seconds to start counting. One . . .’

‘Count, Beate!’

‘One.’ Her voice was a dry whisper. ‘Two.’

‘Stine pronounced the final death sentence for herself and Lev,’ Trond said.

‘Three.’

‘She said I could shoot her, but I should spare him.’

Harry felt his throat constrict and his grip on the gun weaken.

‘Four.’

‘In other words, he would have shot Stine however long the branch manager took to put the money in the bag?’ Halvorsen asked.

Harry nodded gloomily.

‘Since you seem to know everything, I take it you also know his escape route,’ Ivarsson said. The tone was intended to be sarcastic and amusing, but the irritation shone through all too clearly.

‘No, but I assume he took the same route back. Up Industrigata, down Pilestredet, into the building site where he took off the balaclava and stuck the POLITI label on the back of the boiler suit. When he was back in Focus, he was wearing a cap and sunglasses, and
failed to attract the attention of the centre staff since they didn’t recognise the photos of him. He went into the changing room and put on the sports gear he had been wearing when he arrived from work, then joined the general hubbub in the fitness rooms, did a bit of cycling, maybe lifted a few weights. Then he showered, went to the reception desk and reported his squash racquet missing. The girl who took his details gave the exact time as 16.02. The alibi was cemented and he went into the street, heard the sirens and drove home. Possibly.’

‘I don’t know if I understand the purpose of the police labels,’ the Chief Inspector said. ‘We don’t even have boiler suits in the force.’

‘Elementary psychology,’ Beate said and her cheeks glowed when she saw the Chief Superintendent’s raised eyebrow. ‘I mean . . . not elementary in the sense that it’s . . . erm, obvious.’

‘Go on,’ the Chief Superintendent said.

‘Trond Grette knew, of course, that the police would search for anyone wearing a boiler suit observed in the area. He, therefore, had to have something on his boiler suit which would cause all the police swarming around to pay little attention to this unidentified person in Focus. The public always shies away from the police.’

‘Interesting theory,’ Ivarsson said with a sour smile and the tips of two fingers under his chin.

‘She’s right,’ the Chief Superintendent said. ‘Everyone has a fear of authority. Go on.’

‘But, to be absolutely sure, he pretended to be a witness and volunteer information about a man he had seen walking past the fitness room wearing a boiler suit with POLITI on.’

‘Which was a stroke of genius in itself,’ Harry said. ‘Grette told us this as if he was unaware that the police strip ruled the man out of our inquiries. Of course, it also strengthened Trond Grette’s credibility in our eyes that he volunteered information which – seen from his point of view – might place him on the murderer’s escape route.’

‘Eh?’ said Møller. ‘Repeat that one more time, Harry. Slowly.’

Harry took a deep breath.

‘Oh, never mind,’ Møller said. ‘I’ve got a headache.’

‘Seven.’

‘But you didn’t do what she asked,’ Harry said. ‘You didn’t spare your brother.’

‘Of course not,’ Trond said.

‘Did he know you had killed her?’

‘I had the pleasure of telling him myself. On the mobile. He was waiting in Gardemoen airport. I told him if he didn’t get on the plane, I would go after him too.’

‘And he believed you when you said you’d killed Stine?’

Trond laughed. ‘Lev knew me. He didn’t doubt it for a second. While I was giving him the details, he was reading about the raid on teletext in the business lounge. He switched off his phone when I heard them call his flight. His and Stine’s. Hey, you!’ He put the gun to Beate’s head.