Police: A Harry Hole thriller (Oslo Sequence 8) (30 page)

‘I’ve been fielding queries from the Investigation Unit about the use of officers on the tram. They’re wondering what’s going on and if it has any connection with the police murders.’

‘Rumours spread quickly,’ Beate said.

‘Bit too quickly,’ Hagen said. ‘This is going to get to Bellman’s ears.’

Katrine stared at the screen. Patterns. This was her strength, this was; it was how they had managed to trace the Snowman that time. So. One and zero. Two numbers in pairs. Ten maybe? A pair of numbers that go together several times. Several times. Several . . .

‘For this reason I’ll have to inform him about Valentin this evening.’

‘What does that mean for our group?’ Beate asked.

‘Valentin turning up on a tram isn’t our fault. It’s obvious we had to act. However, with that our group has completed its mission. It has established that Valentin is alive and given us a main suspect. And if we don’t catch him, there’s a chance he’ll turn up at the house in Berg. Now other officers will take over, folks.’

‘What about poly-ti?’ Katrine said.

‘I beg your pardon,’ Hagen answered in a soft voice.

‘Ståle says that you write what’s going on in your subconscious. Valentin has written lots of tens, one after the other. Another way of saying “many” is “poly”. So,
poly-ti
. As in
politi
. Police. That might mean he’s planning to murder more police officers.’

‘What’s she blathering about?’ Hagen asked, turning to Ståle.

Ståle Aune shrugged. ‘We’re trying to interpret his doodles on the tram window. My own doodle suggested that he was writing die. But what if he’s content to use ones and zeros? The human brain is a four-dimensional labyrinth. Everyone’s been there; no one knows the way.’

As Katrine walked through Oslo’s streets on her way to the police flat in Grünerløkka, she wasn’t aware of life around her, the laughing, excited people hurrying to celebrate the short spring, the short weekend, life before it was over.

She knew now. Why they had been so obsessed with this idiotic ‘code’. Because they were desperately hoping that things would cohere, have some meaning. But more importantly, because they had nothing else to go on. So they flogged a dead horse.

Her gaze was fixed on the pavement in front of her, and she was banging her heels on the tarmac in time to the incantation she kept repeating: ‘One more time, you bastard. Strike one more time.’

Harry had taken her long hair in his hand. It was still dark and shiny and so thick it felt like you were holding coiled rope. He pulled it towards him, tipping her head back, and looked down at her slender, arched back, her spine winding like a snake beneath her glowing, perspiring skin. Thrust again. Her groan was like a low-frequency growl coming from the depths of her chest, an angry, frustrated sound. Sometimes their lovemaking was quiet, calm, lazy like a slow dance, a shuffle. At other times it was like fighting. As it was tonight. It was as though her wanton lust bred greater lust, like now; it was like trying to extinguish a fire with petrol, it escalated, burned out of control, and often he thought, Jesus, this can’t end well.

Her dress was lying on the floor beside the bed. Red. She was so attractive in red it was almost a sin. Barefoot. No, she hadn’t been barefoot. Harry leaned over and breathed in her aroma.

‘Don’t stop,’ she groaned.

Opium. Rakel had told him the bitter smell was sweat from the bark of an Arab tree. No, not sweat, it was tears. The tears of a princess who fled to Arabia because of a forbidden love. Princess Myrrha. Myrrh. Her life ended in grief, but Yves Saint Laurent paid a fortune per litre of tears.

‘Don’t stop, hold . . .’

She had taken his hand, pressed it against her neck. He squeezed carefully. Felt the blood vessels and the tensed muscles in her slender neck.

‘Harder! Har—’

Her voice was cut off as he did what she said. Knowing that now he had stopped the flow of oxygen to her brain. This had been her thing, something he did and got a kick out of because he knew she got a kick out of it. But something was different now. The thought that she was in his power. That he could do with her as he wished. He stared down at her dress. The red dress. Felt it building up inside him and that he wouldn’t be able to hold it back. He closed his eyes and imagined her. On all fours as she slowly turned over, looked at him, while her hair changed colour, and he saw who she was. Her eyes had rolled backwards and her neck was covered in bruises, which became visible as the forensics officer’s flash went off.

Harry let go and pulled his hand away. But Rakel was already there. She had tensed up and was shaking like a deer the second before it hits the ground. Then she died. Slumped with her forehead against the mattress, a bitter sob came from her mouth. She lay like that, kneeling as if in prayer.

Harry pulled out. She whimpered, turned and eyed him accusingly. Usually he waited before pulling out until she was ready for the separation.

Harry kissed her quickly on the neck, slid out of bed and fished around for the Paul Smith underpants she had bought him at some airport. Found his pack of Camel in the Wranglers hanging over the chair. Went downstairs to the living room. Sat in a chair and looked out of the window, where the night was at its darkest and yet not so dark that he couldn’t see the silhouette of Holmenkollen Ridge against the sky. Lit a cigarette. Immediately afterwards he heard the patter of her feet behind him. Felt a hand stroking his hair and neck.

‘Is there something wrong?’

‘No.’

She sat down on the arm of the chair and snuggled her nose up against his neck. Her skin was still hot and smelt of Rakel and lovemaking. And Princess Myrrha’s tears.

‘Opium,’ he said. ‘Quite a name for a perfume.’

‘Don’t you like it?’

‘Yes, I do.’ Harry blew smoke at the ceiling. ‘But it’s quite . . . pronounced.’

She lifted her head. Looked at him. ‘And you’re telling me that now?’

‘I hadn’t thought about it before. I didn’t really now, either.’

‘Is it the booze?’

‘What?’

‘The alcohol in the perfume. Is it that . . .?’

He shook his head.

‘But there’s something,’ she said. ‘I know you, Harry. You’re troubled, restless. Look at the way you’re smoking. You’re sucking it out as if it were the last drop of water in the world.’

Harry smiled. Stroked the gooseflesh on her back. She kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘So if it’s not alcoholic abstinence, it’s the other variety.’

‘The other variety?’

‘The police variety.’

‘Oh, that,’ he said.

‘It’s the police murders, isn’t it?’

‘Beate came here to persuade me. She said she’d talked to you first.’

Rakel nodded.

‘And that you’d given the impression it was fine by you,’ Harry said.

‘I said it was up to you.’

‘Had you forgotten our promise?’

‘No, but I can’t force you to keep a promise, Harry.’

‘And what if I’d said yes and joined the investigation?’

‘Then you would have broken your promise.’

‘And the consequences?’

‘For you, me and Oleg? Greater chance that we would be doomed. For the investigation into the murders of the three officers? Greater chance of success.’

‘Mm. The former is definite, Rakel. The latter highly doubtful.’

‘Maybe. But you know very well that we could be doomed anyway, whether you work for the police or not. There are several pitfalls. One is that you start climbing the walls because you can’t do what you feel you were born to do. I’ve heard of men whose relationships break down just in time for the autumn hunt.’

‘Elk. Rather than birds of the featherless variety, you mean?’

‘Yes, that does have to be said in their favour.’

Harry inhaled. Their voices were lowered, calm, as though they were discussing the shopping. That was how they talked, he thought. That was what she was like. He pulled her to him. Whispered in her ear.

‘I want to keep you, Rakel. I want to keep this.’

‘Yes?’

‘Yes. This is good. This is the best I’ve ever known. And you know what makes me tick, you remember Ståle’s diagnosis. An addictive personality bordering on OCD. Booze or hunting, it makes no difference, my mind starts whirring in the same grooves. As soon as I open the door, I’m there, Rakel. And I don’t want to be there. I want to be
here
. Hell, I’m on the way there now, only talking about it! I’m not doing this for Oleg and you; I’m doing it for me.’

‘There, there.’ Rakel stroked his hair. ‘Let’s talk about something else then.’

‘Yes. So they said Oleg would be out early?’

‘Yes. There are no more withdrawal symptoms. And he seems more motivated than ever. Harry?’

‘Yes.’

‘He told me what happened that night.’ Her hand continued to stroke him. He wanted it to be there for ever.

‘Which night?’

‘You know. The night the doctor patched you up.’

‘Oh, he told you, did he?’

‘You told me you were shot by one of Asayev’s dealers.’

‘In a sense that’s true. Oleg was one of them.’

‘I preferred the old version. The one about Oleg appearing at the crime scene afterwards, seeing how badly hurt you were and running along the Akerselva to A&E.’

‘But you never really believed it, did you?’

‘He told me he burst in and forced a doctor at gunpoint to go with him.’

‘The doctor forgave Oleg when he saw my state.’

Rakel shook her head. ‘He would have liked to tell me the rest as well, but he says he doesn’t remember much from those months.’

‘Heroin does have that effect.’

‘But I thought you might fill in the gaps for me now. What do you say?’

Harry inhaled. Waited a second. Let out the smoke. ‘I prefer to say as little as possible.’

She tugged his hair. ‘I believed you that time because I
wanted
to. My God, Harry, Oleg shot you. He should be in prison.’

Harry shook his head. ‘It was an accident, Rakel. All that’s behind us now, and as long as the police don’t find the Odessa gun no one can link Oleg to the murder of Gusto Hanssen or anyone else.’

‘What do you mean? Oleg has been acquitted of that murder. Are you saying he had something to do with it after all?’

‘No, Rakel.’

‘So what are you telling me, Harry?’

‘Are you sure you want to know, Rakel? Really?’

She looked at Harry hard without answering.

Harry waited. Stared out of the window. Saw the silhouette of the ridge surrounding this quiet, secure town where nothing happened. Which was actually the edge of a dormant volcano, where the town had been built. Depending on how you looked at it. Depending on what you knew.

‘No,’ she whispered in the darkness. Taking his hand and putting it to her cheek.

It was easy to live a happy life of ignorance, Harry thought. It was just a question of repression. Repressing an Odessa lying, or not lying, locked in a cupboard. Repressing three murders that were not your responsibility. Repressing the image of the hate-filled eyes of a rejected student with a red dress pulled up over her waist. Wasn’t it?

Harry stubbed out his cigarette.

‘Shall we go to bed?’

At three o’clock in the morning Harry woke with a start.

He had dreamt about her again. He had gone into a room and found her there. She was lying on a filthy mattress on the floor, cutting up the red dress she was wearing with a big pair of scissors. Beside her was a portable TV broadcasting her and what she was doing with a two-second delay. Harry looked around, but he couldn’t see a camera anywhere. Then she placed one shiny blade against the inside of her white thigh, opened her legs and whispered:

‘Don’t do it.’

And Harry fumbled behind him and found the handle of the door that had closed after him, but it was locked. Then he discovered that he was naked and was moving towards her.

‘Don’t do it.’

It sounded like an echo from the TV. A two-second delay.

‘I just have to get the key,’ he said, but it sounded like he was talking underwater, and he knew she hadn’t heard. Then she put two, three, four fingers inside her vagina, and he stared as the whole of the slim hand slipped inside. He took another step towards her. Then the hand came back out holding a gun. Pointed at him. A shiny, dripping gun with a cable leading back inside her like an umbilical cord. ‘Don’t do it,’ she had said, but he was already kneeling in front of her, leaning forward. Felt the gun, cool and pleasant, against his forehead. And then he whispered:

‘Do it.’

24

THE TENNIS COURTS
were unoccupied as Bjørn Holm’s Volvo Amazon pulled up in front of Frogner Park and the police car by the main gate.

Beate jumped out, wide awake despite having slept hardly a wink. It was hard to sleep in a stranger’s bed. Yes, she still thought of him as a stranger. She knew his body, but his mind, habits and thinking were still a mystery she wondered whether she had enough patience or interest to explore. So every morning she woke in his bed, she asked herself the question: are you going to carry on?

Two plain-clothes policemen leaning back against the car straightened and came to meet her. She saw two uniformed officers sitting in the front seats of the car and another man in the back.

‘Is that him?’ she asked, feeling her heart beat wonderfully fast.

‘Yes,’ said one of the plain-clothes men. ‘Great police sketch. He’s the spitting image.’

‘And the tram?’

‘We sent it on, it was packed to the brim. But we took one woman’s details as there was a bit of drama.’

‘Oh?’

‘He tried to make a run for it when we showed our ID and said he had to come along with us. He leapt into the aisle and grabbed a pram to block our way. Yelled for the tram to stop.’

‘A pram?’

‘Yes, you can’t believe it, can you? Bloody criminal.’

‘I’m afraid he’s committed worse.’

‘I mean, taking a pram on the tram during the morning rush hour.’

‘OK. But then you arrested him?’

‘The baby’s mother screamed and held onto his arm so that I could get a punch in.’ The policeman showed the bleeding knuckles on his right fist. ‘No point brandishing a shooter when this works, is there?’