Police: A Harry Hole thriller (Oslo Sequence 8) (41 page)

Truls had lived in East Oslo all his life and had never heard of the place. ‘And why should I?’

‘The suspension,’ Mikael said, pouring the rest of the mineral water into his glass. ‘I’ll get it revoked.’

‘Oh?’ Truls regarded Mikael with mistrust.

‘Yes.’

Truls took a swig from his glass. Ran the back of his hand across his mouth although the foam had settled long ago. Took his time. ‘If it’s so easy, why didn’t you do it before?’

Mikael closed his eyes, inhaled. ‘It’s not so easy, but I want to do it.’

‘Because?’

‘Because I’m screwed unless you help me.’

Truls chuckled. ‘Strange how quickly the tables turn. Eh, Mikael?’

Mikael Bellman glanced in both directions. The room was full, but he had chosen it because it wasn’t somewhere frequented by police officers, and he shouldn’t be seen with Truls. And he had a feeling Truls knew. But so what?

‘What’s it going to be? I can ask someone else.’

Truls guffawed. ‘Can you hell!’

Mikael scoured the room. He didn’t want to tell Truls to keep his voice down, but . . . In times gone by Mikael had largely been able to predict how Truls would react, had been able to coax him into doing what he wanted. There had been a change in him; there was something sinister, something evil and unpredictable about his childhood friend now.

‘I need an answer. It’s urgent.’

‘Fine,’ Truls said, draining the glass. ‘The suspension’s fine. But I need one more thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A pair of Ulla’s panties – unwashed.’

Mikael stared at Truls. Was he drunk? Or was the ferocity in his moist eyes a permanent feature now?

Truls laughed even louder and banged his glass down on the table. Some of those who count turned round.

‘I . . .’ Mikael started. ‘I’ll see what—’

‘I’m kidding, you dick!’

Mikael gave a short laugh. ‘Me too. Does that mean you will . . .?’

‘For Christ’s sake, we’ve been pals since we were kids, haven’t we?’

‘Of course. You have no idea how grateful I am, Truls.’ Mikael struggled to smile.

Truls passed a hand across the table. Placed it heavily on Mikael’s shoulder.

‘Oh yes, I have.’

Too
heavily, Mikael thought.

There was no reconnaissance, no examining the floor plan for exits or possible escapes, no circle of police cars blocking the roads at the point where the Delta all-terrain vehicles drove in. There was a short briefing as they went, with Sivert Falkeid barking orders and the heavily armed men at the back staying quiet, which meant they understood.

It was a question of time, and even the world’s best-laid plan would be useless if the bird had already flown.

Harry, sitting at the back of the nine-seater and listening, knew they didn’t have the world’s second- or even third-best-laid plan.

The first thing Falkeid had asked Harry was if he thought Valentin would be armed. Harry had answered that a gun had been used to murder René Kalsnes. And he thought Beate had been threatened with a gun.

He looked at the men in front of him. Police officers who had volunteered for armed operations. He knew what they were paid for the extra work, and it wasn’t too much. And he also knew what taxpayers thought they could demand of Delta troops, and it was much too much. How many times had he heard people with the benefit of hindsight criticising the Delta officers for not exposing themselves to greater danger, for not having a sixth sense to tell them what was going on behind a closed door, in a hijacked plane, on a forest-clad beach and for not rushing in headlong? For a Delta officer with, on average, four missions a year, so approximately a hundred in a career of twenty-five years, such a policy would have meant being killed on active duty. But the main point was still this: being killed in the line of fire was the best way to ensure the failure of an operation and to expose other officers to danger.

‘There’s just one lift,’ Falkeid barked. ‘Two and Three, you take it. Four, Five and Six, you take the main stairs. Seven and Eight the fire escape. Hole, you and I’ll cover the area outside if he exits via a window.’

‘I haven’t got a gun,’ Harry said.

‘Here,’ Falkeid said, passing him a Glock 17.

Harry held it, felt the solid weight, the balance.

He had never understood gun freaks, just as he had never understood car freaks or people who built houses to fit around their sound system. But he had never felt any real objection to holding a gun. Until last year. Harry thought back to the last time he had held a gun. To the Odessa in the cupboard. He dismissed the thought.

‘We’re here,’ Falkeid said. They parked in a quiet street by the gate to a luxurious-looking, four-storey brick building, identical to all the other houses in the area. Harry knew that some of them were old money, some of the new ones wanted to look old, while others were embassies, ambassadors’ residences, advertising bureaus, record companies and smaller shipping lines. A discreet brass sign on the gatepost confirmed that they had come to the right address.

Falkeid held up his watch. ‘Radio communication,’ he said.

The officers said their numbers – the same as the one painted in white on their helmets – in turn. Pulled down their balaclavas. Tightened the belts on their MP5 machine guns.

‘On the count of one we’ll go in. Five, four . . .’

Harry wasn’t sure if it was his own adrenalin or adrenalin from the other men, but there was a distinct smell and taste, bitter, salty, like caps fired from a toy gun.

The doors opened and Harry saw a wall of black backs running through the gate and then the ten metres to the entrance, where they were swallowed up.

Harry stepped out after them, adjusting his bulletproof vest. The skin beneath was already soaked with sweat. Falkeid jumped down from the passenger seat after removing the keys from the ignition. Harry vaguely remembered an episode when the targets of a swoop had made their getaway in a police car with the keys left in. Harry passed the Glock to Falkeid.

‘Haven’t got an up-to-date certificate.’

‘Hereby issued on a provisional basis by me,’ Falkeid said. ‘Emergency. Police regulations paragraph such-and-such. Maybe.’

Harry loaded the gun and strode up the gravel as a young man with a crooked turkey neck came running out. His Adam’s apple was going up and down as if he’d just eaten. Harry observed that the name on the lapel of his black jacket tallied with the name of the receptionist he had spoken to on the phone.

The receptionist hadn’t been able to say for certain if the guest was in his room or anywhere else in the hotel, but he had offered to check. Which Harry had ordered him in the strictest terms not to do. He was to continue with his normal duties and act as if nothing had happened, then neither he nor anyone else would be hurt. The sight of seven men dressed in black and armed to the teeth had probably made it difficult to act as if nothing had happened.

‘I gave them the master key,’ the receptionist said in a pronounced East European accent. ‘They told me to get out and—’

‘Stand behind our vehicle,’ Falkeid whispered, jerking his thumb behind him. Harry left them, walking with gun in hand around the building to the back, where a shadowy garden of apple trees extended down to the fence of the neighbouring property. An elderly man was sitting on the terrace, reading the
Daily Telegraph
. He lowered his newspaper and peered over his glasses. Harry pointed to the yellow letters spelling POLITI on his bulletproof vest, put a finger to his lips, acknowledged a brief nod and concentrated on the third-floor windows. The receptionist had told them where the alleged Belarusian’s room was. It was at the end of the corridor and the window looked out onto the back.

Harry adjusted the earpiece and waited.

After a few seconds it came. The dull, confined explosion of a shock grenade followed by the tinkle of glass.

Harry knew that the air pressure itself wouldn’t have much more effect than deafening those in the room. But the explosion combined with the blinding flash and the men’s assault would paralyse even well-trained targets for the first three seconds. And those three seconds were all the Delta troops needed.

Harry waited. Then a subdued voice came through his earpiece. Just what he expected.

‘Room 406 taken. No one here.’

It was what came after that made Harry swear out loud.

‘Looks like he’s been here to pick up his stuff.’

Harry was standing, arms crossed, in the corridor outside room 406 as Katrine and Bjørn arrived.

‘Good shot. Hit the post?’ Katrine asked.

‘Missed an open goal,’ Harry said, shaking his head.

They followed him into the room.

‘He came straight here, grabbed all his stuff and was gone.’

‘All?’ Bjørn queried.

‘All except for two used Q-tips and two tram tickets we found in the waste-paper basket. Plus the stub of this ticket to a football match I have a feeling we won.’

‘
We
?’ Bjørn asked, looking around the bog-standard hotel room. ‘Do you mean Vålerenga?’

‘Norway. Versus Slovenia, it says.’

‘We won,’ Bjørn said. ‘Riise scored in extra time.’

‘Sick. How can you men remember things like that?’ Katrine said, shaking her head. ‘I can’t even remember if Brann won the league or were demoted last year.’

‘I’m not like that,’ Bjørn objected. ‘I only remember it because it was heading for a draw and then I was called out, and Riise—’

‘You remembered it anyway, Rain Man. You—’

‘Hey.’ They turned to Harry, who was staring at the ticket. ‘Can you remember what it was for, Bjørn?’

‘Eh?’

‘The call-out?’

Bjørn Holm scratched one sideburn. ‘Let’s see, it was early in the evening . . .’

‘Never mind,’ Harry said. ‘It was the murder of Erlend Vennesla in Maridalen.’

‘Was it?’

‘The same evening that Norway was playing at Ullevål Stadium. The date’s here on the ticket. Seven o’clock.’

‘Aha,’ Katrine said.

Bjørn Holm’s face showed a pained expression. ‘Don’t say that, Harry. Please don’t say Valentin Gjertsen was at the match. If he was there—’

‘—he can’t be the murderer,’ Katrine finished. ‘And we would very much like him to be, Harry. So please say something encouraging now.’

‘OK,’ Harry said. ‘Why wasn’t this ticket in the basket with the Q-tips and the tram tickets? Why did he put it on the desk when he tidied everything else up? Placed it exactly where he knew we’d find it?’

‘He’s left his alibi,’ Katrine said.

‘He left it for us so that we would stand here like we’re doing now,’ Harry said. ‘Suddenly having doubts, unsure what to do. But this is only a stub. It doesn’t prove he was there. On the contrary, it’s pretty striking that not only was he at a football match, in a stadium where fans don’t tend to remember each other, but also that, inexplicably, he has saved the ticket.’

‘The ticket’s got a seat number,’ Katrine said. ‘Perhaps the people sitting next to him and behind him can remember who was there. Or if the seat was unoccupied. I can search for the seat number. Perhaps I’ll find—’

‘Do that,’ Harry said. ‘But we’ve been through this before with alleged alibis in the theatre or the cinema. Three or four days pass and people don’t remember a thing about their neighbours.’

‘You’re right,’ Katrine said, resigned.

‘Internationals,’ Bjørn said.

‘What about them?’ Harry asked, heading for the bathroom, his flies already half undone.

‘International matches are subject to FIFA rules and regulations,’ Bjørn said. ‘Hooliganism.’

‘Of course,’ Harry shouted from behind the bathroom door. ‘Well done, Bjørn!’ Then the door slammed.

‘What?’ Katrine shouted. ‘What are you on about?’

‘CCTV,’ Bjørn said. ‘FIFA requires match organisers to film the spectators in case there are any disturbances. The ruling came in during the wave of hooliganism in the 1990s to help the police find the troublemakers and charge them. They film the stands throughout the match with high-definition cameras so that they can zoom in and identify every single face. And we’ve got the seating area, row and seat number of where Valentin sat.’

‘
Didn’t
sit!’ Katrine shouted. ‘He’s not allowed to be on any bloody footage, all right? Or we’ll be back to square one.’

‘They may of course have deleted the images,’ Bjørn said. ‘There wasn’t any trouble during the match, and I’m sure the data-archiving directive states how long they’re allowed to keep—’

‘The data-archiving directive . . .’

‘If the images are stored electronically then all they have to do is press Delete for the files to disappear.’

‘Trying to remove files permanently is like trying to remove dog shit from your trainers. Difficult. How do you think we find child porn on computers pervs have handed in voluntarily, thinking they’ve got rid of the lot? Believe me, I’ll find Valentin Gjertsen if he was at the stadium that evening. What was the assumed time of death for Erlend Vennesla?’

They heard the toilet flush.

‘Between seven and half eight,’ Bjørn said. ‘In other words, right at the start of the game, after Henriksen equalised. Vennesla must have heard the cheering up in Maridalen. It’s not far from Ullevål, is it?’

The bathroom door opened. ‘Which means he could have made it to the match after the murder in Maridalen,’ Harry said, doing up the last button. ‘Once he was in the stadium he could have done something that people around him would remember. Alibi.’

‘Valentin was
not
at the match,’ Katrine said. ‘But if he was I’ll watch the sodding video from start to finish and time him if he so much as lifts his bum off the seat. Alibi, my arse.’

There was a silence hanging over the large detached houses.

The silence before the storm of Volvos and Audis returning home after working for Norway Ltd, Truls Berntsen thought.

He rang the bell and looked around.

Nicely established garden. Well looked after. You probably had time to do that if you were a retired Chief of Police.

The door opened. He looked older. The same sharp blue eyes, but the skin around his neck was a little looser, his back not quite as straight. He was simply not as impressive as Truls remembered him. Perhaps it was just the faded casual clothes; perhaps that’s how it is when your job doesn’t keep you on your toes any more.