Police: A Harry Hole thriller (Oslo Sequence 8) (25 page)

The contact information for Anton Mittet’s widow, Laura Mittet, was in the report.

Katrine hesitated, then dialled the number. The voice of the woman who answered sounded weary, dulled by pills. Katrine introduced herself and asked her question.

‘Chewing gum?’ Laura Mittet repeated slowly. ‘No, he never chewed gum. He drank coffee.’

‘Was there anyone else who drove the car and chewed—?’

‘No one ever drove the car apart from Anton.’

‘Thank you,’ Katrine said.

19

IT WAS EVENING
and the kitchen windows in the yellow wooden house in Oppsal where Beate Lønn had just finished her daily conversation with her son were brightly lit. Afterwards she had talked to her mother-in-law and agreed that if the boy still had a temperature and was coughing, they would have to postpone the journey home for a few days. The in-laws would love to have him for a bit longer in Steinkjer. Beate unhooked the plastic leftovers bag in the cupboard under the sink and was putting it in one of the white rubbish bags when the phone rang. It was Katrine, and she didn’t waste any time on pleasantries.

‘There was a piece of chewing gum under the driver’s seat in Mittet’s car.’

‘Right . . .’

‘It was removed, but it hasn’t been sent for DNA testing.’

‘I wouldn’t have sent it either if it was under the driver’s seat. It was Mittet’s. Listen, if you tested every single thing you found at a crime scene, the queue would make waiting times—’

‘But Ståle was right, Beate! People don’t stick gum under their own dining-room tables. Or in their own cars. According to Mittet’s wife, he didn’t even chew gum. And no one else drove the car except him. I think the person who left the gum was leaning across the driver’s seat when he did it. And according to the report the murderer was sitting in the passenger seat and leaned across Mittet to fasten his hands to the wheel with the ties. The car has been in the river, but according to Bjørn the DNA in the spit can—’

‘Yes, I know where you’re going,’ Beate interrupted. ‘You’ll have to ring someone in Bellman’s investigative unit and tell them.’

‘But don’t you understand?’ Katrine said. ‘This could lead us straight to the murderer.’

‘Yes, of course I understand, and the only place this is leading us is straight to hell. We’ve been taken off the case, Katrine.’

‘I can just drop by the Evidence Room and have the chewing gum sent for testing,’ Katrine said. ‘Check it against the register. If there’s no match, no one needs to know. If there’s a match we’ve solved the case. No one’s going to say a bloody word about how we did it. Yes, I’m all ego now. For once we could get the credit, Beate.
You and I
. The women. And we deserve it, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Yes, it’s tempting, and it won’t ruin anyone else’s work, but—’

‘No buts! For once we can take the liberty of using our elbows. Or do you want to see Bellman standing there with that smug smile being honoured for our work again?’

Silence. A long silence.

‘You say no one needs to know anything,’ Beate said. ‘But all requisition orders for potential forensic clues from the Evidence Room have to be registered at the requests hatch. If they discover we’ve been sticking our noses into the Mittet file, it won’t be long before a note lands on Bellman’s desk to that effect.’

‘Hm, I hear you,’ Katrine said. ‘Unless my memory’s playing tricks on me, the Krimteknisk boss – who on occasion needs to test evidence outside of the Evidence Room’s opening hours – has her own key.’

Beate groaned aloud.

‘I promise there won’t be any trouble,’ Katrine hastened to add. ‘Listen, I’ll pop round to yours now, borrow the key, find the gum, cut off a tiny chunk, put everything back nicely and tomorrow morning the chunk’s tested at the Institute. If they ask, I’ll say it’s for another case. Yes? OK?’

The head of Krimteknisk weighed up the pros and cons. It wasn’t hard. It wasn’t OK at all. She took a deep breath.

‘As Harry used to say,’ Katrine said. ‘
Just get the ball
, for Christ’s sake.’

Rico Herrem lay in bed watching TV. It was five o’clock in the morning, but he had lost track of time and couldn’t sleep. The programme was a repeat of one he saw yesterday. A Komodo dragon was lolloping across a beach. The long lizard tongue flashed out, swept round and was retracted. It was following a water buffalo it had given an apparently harmless bite. Had been following it for several days. Rico had turned down the sound so that all that could be heard was the wheeze of the air-conditioning unit which couldn’t make the hotel room cold enough. Rico had already felt the sniffles coming on the flight. Classic. Air conditioning and summer clothes on the way to a hot country, and the holiday becomes a headache, a runny nose and a high temperature. But he had time; he didn’t have to go home for a long while. Why should he? He was in Pattaya, the paradise of all pervs and criminals on the run. Everything he wanted was here, outside his hotel door. Through the mosquito net by the window he could hear the traffic and voices gabbling away in a foreign language. Thai. He couldn’t understand a word. He didn’t need to. Because they were there for him, not vice versa. He had seen them when he was driven here from the airport. They lined up outside the go-go bars. The young. The very young. And further down the alleys, behind the trays they sold chewing gum from, the much too young. But they would still be there when he was back on his feet. He listened for waves breaking, even though he knew the cheap hotel he had moved into was a long way from the beach. But they were out there as well. Them and the scorching hot sun. And the drinks and the other
farangs
who were there on the same mission as him and could give him some tips about how to go about things. And about the Komodo dragon.

Last night he had dreamt about Valentin again.

Rico stretched out his hand for the bottle of water on the bedside table. It tasted of his own mouth, death and contagion.

He had been given two-day-old Norwegian newspapers with the Western breakfast he’d hardly touched. There hadn’t been anything about Valentin being arrested yet. It wasn’t difficult to surmise why. Valentin wasn’t Valentin any more.

Rico had wondered whether he should tell them. Ring, get hold of that policewoman, Katrine Bratt. Tell her he had changed. Rico had seen that down here you could get that kind of thing done for a few thousand Norwegian kroner at one of the private clinics. Ring Bratt, leave an anonymous message that Valentin had been seen near Fiskebutikken and that he’d had comprehensive plastic surgery. Without asking for anything in return. Just to help them catch him. To help him sleep at night without dreaming about him.

The Komodo dragon had crouched a few metres from the waterhole where the water buffalo had settled down in the cooling mud, apparently unaffected by the three-metre-long, carnivorous monster just lying in wait.

Rico could feel the nausea rising and swung his legs out of bed. His muscles ached. Jesus, this was full-blown flu.

When he returned from the bathroom it was with bile acid still burning in his throat and two decisions made. He would visit one of those clinics and get himself some of that strong medicine they wouldn’t give you in Norway. The second was that when he had it and felt a bit better, he would ring Bratt. Give her a description. So that he could sleep.

He turned up the volume with the remote control. An enthusiastic voice explained in English that it had long been thought that the Komodo dragon killed through the bacteria-infected spit that was injected into the victim’s bloodstream with a bite, but now it had been discovered that in fact the poison in the lizard’s glands stopped the victim’s blood from coagulating so it slowly bled to death from what seemed to be an innocent wound.

Rico shivered. Closed his eyes to sleep. Rohypnol. The thought had occurred to him. That this wasn’t flu at all, but withdrawal symptoms. And Rohypnol was probably something they had on the room-service menu here in Pattaya. His eyes opened wide. He couldn’t breathe. For a moment in sheer, utter panic, Rico writhed around as if fighting an invisible attacker. It was just the same as at Fiskebutikken; there was no oxygen in the room! Then his lungs got what they wanted, and he fell back onto his bed.

He stared at the door.

It was locked.

There was no one else here. No one. Just him.

20

KATRINE WALKED UP
the hill under cover of night. A wan, anaemic moon hung low in the sky behind her, but Police HQ’s facade didn’t reflect any of the little light the moon cast, it swallowed it like a black hole. She glanced at the compact, professional wristwatch she had inherited from her father, a fallen policeman with the fitting nickname of Iron Rafto. A quarter past eleven.

She tugged open the front door of Police HQ with its strange, staring porthole and hostile weight. As though the suspicion started right here.

She waved in the direction of the duty officer, who sat hidden on the left, but could see her. And unlocked the door to the atrium. Walked past the unmanned reception desk and went over to the lift, which she took down to the lower ground floor. Exited and crossed the concrete floor in the meagre light, hearing her own footsteps as she listened for others.

During the day the iron door to the Evidence Room opened on to a counter. She fished out the key Beate had given her, put it in the lock, twisted and opened. Stepped inside. Listened.

Then she locked the door behind her.

Switched on the light, lifted the hinged section of the counter and advanced into the darkness, which was so dense the torchlight seemed to need time to bore its way through, to find the rows of broad shelves filled with boxes made of frosted plastic through which you could only just make out the objects inside. The person in charge must have had an orderly mind because the boxes were lined up on the shelves with such precision that the short sides formed an unbroken surface. Katrine strode along reading the case numbers stuck to the boxes. They were numbered chronologically from the far left of the room inwards, where they took the place of evidence from time-restricted cases once the stored material was returned to the owners or destroyed.

She had almost reached the end of the middle row when the torch beam fell on the box she was after. It was on the lowest shelf and scraped against the brick floor as she pulled it out. She whipped off the lid. The contents tallied with the report. An ice scraper. A seat cover. A plastic bag containing some strands of hair. A plastic bag containing some chewing gum. She put down the torch, opened the bag, removed the gum with tweezers and was about to cut off a bit when she felt a draught in the clammy air.

She looked down at her forearm, which was caught in the torchlight, and saw the shadow of fine hairs standing up. Then she raised her eyes, grabbed the torch and shone it at the wall. Beneath the ceiling there was an inset hatch fan. But as it was only inset it was unlikely it could have caused on its own what she was fairly certain was a movement in the air.

She listened.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just the throbbing of blood in her ears.

She concentrated on the hard piece of chewing gum again. Cut off a tiny piece with the Swiss army knife she had brought along. And froze.

It came from somewhere by the door, so far away the ear hadn’t been able to identify what it was. The rattle of a key? The banging of a counter? It was probably nothing; perhaps you just get strange sounds in a large building.

Katrine switched off the torch and held her breath. Blinked into the darkness as though that might help her to see. It was quiet. As quiet as the . . .

She tried not to continue that train of thought.

Instead she tried another train of thought, one that would slow her heart down: what was actually the worst that could happen? She was caught exceeding the call of duty and they were all reprimanded? Perhaps she would be sent home to Bergen? Tedious, but not exactly a reason for her heart to pound like a pneumatic drill inside her chest.

She waited, listening.

Nothing.

Still nothing.

And that was when she realised. Pitch black. If someone had really been there they would of course have switched on the light. She grinned at her own stupidity, felt her heart slowing down. Switched the torch on, put the evidence back in the box and replaced it. Made sure it was exactly in line with the other boxes, and walked towards the exit. A thought flashed through her mind. A stray thought that caught her by surprise. She was looking forward to ringing him. Because that was what she was going to do. Ring him and tell him what she had done. She came to an abrupt halt.

The torch beam had caught something.

Her first instinct was to keep walking; a small, cowardly voice that told her to get out as fast as she could.

But she shone the light back.

An unevenness.

One of the boxes wasn’t in line.

She went closer. Shone the torch on the label.

Harry thought he heard a door slam. He pulled out his earphones on the sound of Bon Iver’s new recording, which so far had lived up to the hype. Listened. Nothing.

‘Arnold?’ he called.

No answer. He was used to having this wing of PHS to himself so late in the evening. Of course it could have been a member of the cleaning staff who had forgotten something. But a quick look at his watch confirmed it was not evening but night. Harry glanced to the left of the pile of uncorrected assignments on his desk. Most students had printed them on the rough recycled paper they used at the library, and it was so dusty that Harry went home with nicotine-yellow fingertips, which Rakel told him to wash before he was allowed to touch her.

He looked out of the window. The moon hung in the sky, big and round, reflecting on the windows and the roofs of the blocks towards Kirkeveien and Majorstuen. To the south he saw the green, shimmering silhouette of the KPMG financial services building beside the Colosseum cinema. It wasn’t magnificent, beautiful or even picturesque. But it was the town he had lived and worked in almost all his life. There were some mornings in Hong Kong when he had put a bit of opium in a cigarette and gone up onto the roof of Chungking to see the day break. Sitting there in the darkness wishing the town, which would soon come to life, were his. A modest town with low, self-effacing buildings instead of these intimidating steel steeples. Wishing he could see Oslo’s soft, green ridges instead of Hong Kong’s brutally steep, black mountainsides. Hear the sound of a tram clanking and braking or the Denmark ferry entering the fjord and whistling, elated that today too it had succeeded in crossing the sea between Frederikshavn and Oslo.