Police: A Harry Hole thriller (Oslo Sequence 8) (46 page)

He waited until he heard the chairman draw breath to say something so that he could proceed to the final act. The finale. The
coup de grâce
.

‘And if I may add, since this is also about the council’s competence and management of serious cases such as the police murders, Mr Chairman . . .’

The chair’s bushy eyebrows, which usually arched high above smiling eyes, were now low and protruded like greyish-white awnings over an angry glare. The ex-Chief waited for the chairman to nod.

‘. . . I appreciate that on this matter the council has been subject to immense personal pressure – after all it is their area of responsibility, and the case has attracted huge media coverage. But when a city council cedes to pressure and acts in panic by attempting to cut off the head of its Chief of Police, the question is perhaps more: is the council up to its job? We, of course, understand that this may be an excessively demanding issue for a newly elected city council. It’s unfortunate that a situation requiring experience and routine procedure should come so early in the council’s period of office.’

He saw the chairman recoil as he recognised the phrasing.

‘It would have been better if this had landed on the desk of the previous City Council, given its long years of experience and its many achievements.’

He could see from Skøyen’s suddenly pale face that she too recognised her own words about Bellman at the previous meeting. And he had to confess that it was indeed a long time since he’d had such fun.

‘I’m sure,’ he concluded, ‘that is what everyone in this room would have wished for, including the current council.’

‘Thank you for being so clear and candid,’ the chairman said. ‘I assume this means you do not have any alternative plan of action.’

The old man nodded. ‘I don’t. But there’s a man outside whom I have taken the liberty of summoning in my place. He’ll give you what you’ve asked for.’

He stood up, gave a brief nod and walked towards the door. He thought he could feel Isabelle Skøyen’s glare burning holes in his tweed jacket somewhere between his shoulder blades. But it didn’t matter; he had no plans she could thwart. And he knew that tonight what he would revel in most, over a glass of wine, would be the two small words he had woven into the text. They contained all the subtext the council needed. One was ‘attempting’, as in ‘attempting to cut off the head of its Chief of Police’. The other was ‘current’, as in ‘the current council’.

Mikael Bellman got up from his chair as the door opened.

‘Your turn,’ said the man in the tweed jacket, proceeding past him to the lift without gracing him with a glance.

Bellman assumed he must have been mistaken when he thought he detected a tiny smile on the man’s lips.

Then he swallowed, took a deep breath and entered the same room where not so long ago he had been butchered into little pieces.

The long table was encircled by nine faces. Eight of them oddly expectant, a bit like an audience at the start of the second act after a successful first. One was oddly pale. So pale that for a moment he hardly recognised her. The butcher.

Fourteen minutes later he had finished. He had presented the plan to them. Had explained that the police’s patience had paid dividends, their systematic work had led to a breakthrough in the investigation. The breakthrough was both pleasing and painful because there was a chance that the guilty party might be someone from their own ranks. But they couldn’t turn their backs on that. They had to show the public they were willing to look under every stone, whatever they might find there. Show that they were not cowards. He was prepared for a storm, but in such situations it was all about showing courage, genuine leadership and mental agility. Not just at Police HQ, but also at City Hall. He was ready to stand proudly at the helm, but he needed the council’s confidence to take up arms.

He had noticed that his language had become a little pompous at the end, more pompous than it had seemed when Gunnar Hagen had used it in his living room at home last night. But he knew that he definitely had a few of them on board, a couple of the women had even coloured up, especially when he hammered home the final point. Which was that when all the service pistols in the whole country were checked against this bullet, like a prince with a shoe searching for his Cinderella, he would be the first to hand in his gun for ballistic examination.

However, what counted now was not his way with women but what the chairman thought. And he was rather more poker-faced.

Truls Berntsen put the phone in his pocket and nodded to the Thai woman to bring him another cup of coffee.

She smiled and was gone.

Obliging, these Thais. Unlike the few Norwegians left serving at tables. They were lazy and moody and looked aggrieved at having to do an honest day’s work. Not like the Thai family running this little restaurant in Torshov, who jumped into action if he so much as raised an eyebrow. And when he paid for a lousy spring roll or a coffee, they beamed from ear to ear and bowed holding their palms together as though he were the great white God who had descended from the skies. He had vaguely considered going to Thailand. But it wouldn’t happen. He wanted to work again.

Mikael had just rung and told him their ploy had worked. His suspension would soon be lifted. He hadn’t wanted to specify exactly what he meant by soon, he had just repeated it, ‘soon’.

The coffee came, and Truls took a sip. It wasn’t particularly good, but he had reached the conclusion that he didn’t really like what other people called good coffee. This was how it should taste, percolated in a well-used percolator. The coffee should have a hint of paper filters, plastic and ancient toasted coffee-bean grease. But probably that was why he was the only customer here. People drank their coffee elsewhere and came here later in the day to have a cheap meal or to buy a takeaway.

The Thai woman went to sit at the corner table where the rest of her family looked over what he presumed was the bill. He listened to the buzz of their strange language. Didn’t understand a word, but he liked it. Liked sitting near them. Nodding back graciously when they sent him a smile. Feeling he was part of this community. Was that why he came here? Truls rejected the idea. Concentrated on the problem in hand again.

The rest of what Mikael had said.

They had to hand in their service pistols.

He had said they were going to be checked in connection with the police murders, and he himself – to show the summons applied to everyone, high and low – had handed in his gun for ballistic examin-ation this morning. Truls would have to do the same as quickly as possible, he said, even though he was suspended.

It had to be the bullet in René Kalsnes. They had worked out it had to be from a police gun.

He wasn’t too worried himself. Not only had he swapped the bullet, he had also reported the gun he had used missing, stolen. Of course he had waited for a while – a whole year in fact – to be sure no one would link the weapon with Kalsnes’s murder. Then he had wrenched open the door to his flat with a crowbar to make it look convincing and reported a burglary. He had listed loads of things that had been taken and got forty thousand off the insurance company. Plus a new service pistol.

It wasn’t that that was the problem.

The problem was the bullet in the evidence box. It had – how did it go? – it had seemed like a good idea at the time. But now all of a sudden he needed Mikael Bellman. If he was suspended, he wouldn’t be able to lift Truls’s suspension. Anyway, too late to do anything about that now.

Suspended.

Truls grinned at the notion and raised his coffee cup to toast himself in the reflection from the sunglasses he had put on the table in front of him. Then realised he must have laughed out loud, because the Thais were sending him strange looks.

‘I don’t know if I can pick you up from the airport,’ Harry said, walking past the place where there should have been a park, but the council in a collective aberration had erected a prison-like sports stadium for an international event being arranged for this year, but otherwise not too much happened.

He had to press the phone to his ear to hear her above the noise of rush-hour traffic.

‘I forbid you to pick me up,’ Rakel said. ‘You have more important things to do now. In fact, I was wondering whether I should stay here this weekend, and give you a bit of space.’

‘Space for what?’

‘Space to be Inspector Hole. It’s sweet of you to pretend I wouldn’t get under your feet, but we both know the state you get in when you’re on a case.’

‘I want you to be here. But if you don’t want—’

‘I want to be with you
all
the time, Harry. I want to sit on you so that you can’t go anywhere, that’s what I want. But I don’t think the Harry I want to spend my life with is at home right now.’

‘I like you sitting on me. And I’m not going anywhere.’

‘That’s exactly the point. We’re not going anywhere. We’ve got all the time in the world. OK?’

‘OK.’

‘Fine.’

‘Sure? Because if it would make you happier if I nagged you a bit more, I would gladly do it.’

Her laughter. Just that.

‘And Oleg?’

She told him. He smiled a couple of times. Laughed at least once.

‘I have to go now,’ Harry said, standing in front of the door to Schrøder’s.

‘OK. What sort of meeting is it, by the way?’

‘Rakel . . .’

‘Yes, I know I shouldn’t ask. It’s just so boring here. Harry?’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you love me?’

‘I love you.’

‘I can hear traffic, so does that mean you’re in a public place and you’ve said you love me out loud?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did people turn their heads?’

‘I wasn’t looking.’

‘Would it be childish of me to ask you to do it again?’

‘Yes.’

More laughter. Christ, he would do anything to hear it.

‘So?’

‘I love you, Rakel Fauke.’

‘And I love you, Harry Hole. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

‘Say hello to Oleg.’

They rang off. Harry opened the door and went in.

Silje Gravseng was sitting alone at a table by the window, Harry’s old table. The red skirt and the red blouse stood out like fresh blood against the big old paintings of Oslo on the wall behind her. Only her mouth was redder.

Harry sat down opposite her.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hi,’ she said.

38

‘
THANKS FOR COMING
at such short notice,’ Harry said.

‘I arrived half an hour ago,’ Silje said, nodding towards the empty glass in front of her.

‘Am I . . .?’ Harry started, looking at his watch.

‘Not at all. I just couldn’t wait.’

‘Harry?’

He looked up. ‘Hi, Rita. Nothing today.’

The waitress left.

‘Busy?’ Silje asked. She was sitting very straight in her chair, in a red dress with her arms crossed beneath her bosom and a face that kept changing from pretty and doll-like to something else, something nigh on ugly. The only thing that was constant was the intensity of her gaze. Harry had a feeling that you ought to be able to see every little swing of mood or emotion in that gaze. He must have been blind. Because all he could see was the intensity, nothing else. The desire for God knows what. Because it was not just about what she wanted, one night, one hour, a ten-minute rape-simulated fuck, it wasn’t that simple.

‘I wanted to talk to you because you were on duty at the Rikshospital.’

‘I’ve already spoken to the police about it.’

‘About what?’

‘About Anton Mittet telling me something before he was killed. About arguing with someone or being in a relationship with someone at the hospital. But I told them this wasn’t some isolated murder with a jealous husband, this was the cop killer. It all added up, didn’t it? I’ve read a lot about serial killings, as you probably noticed during the lectures.’

‘There aren’t any lectures about serial killings, Silje. I was wondering if you saw anyone coming or going while you sat there, someone or something that didn’t tally with the routines, that made you sit up, in brief anything that—’

‘—shouldn’t have been there?’ She smiled. Young, white teeth. Two of them crooked. ‘That’s from your lecture.’ Back arched more than necessary.

‘Well?’ Harry said.

‘You think the patient was killed and that Mittet was in on it, don’t you?’ She had angled her head, boosted her cleavage, and Harry wondered if she was acting, or she was really so sure of herself. Or if she was just a deeply disturbed person trying to imitate what she considered normal behaviour, but kept getting it slightly wrong. ‘Yes, you do,’ she said. ‘And so you think Mittet was killed afterwards because he knew too much. And that the murderer disguised it as one of the police murders?’

‘No,’ Harry said. ‘If he’d been killed by people like that his body would have been dumped in the sea with weights in the pockets. Please think carefully, Silje. Concentrate.’

She took a deep breath, and Harry avoided looking at her heaving chest. She tried to catch his eye, but he lowered his head and scratched his neck. Waiting.

‘No, there was no one,’ she said at length. ‘Same routine all the time. A new anaesthetic nurse came, but he stopped after one or two visits.’

‘OK,’ Harry said, putting his hand in his jacket pocket. ‘What about him on the left?’

He placed a printout on the table in front of her. He had found the picture online, Google Images. It showed a young Truls Berntsen on the left of Mikael Bellman by Stovner Police Station.

Silje studied the picture. ‘No, I never saw him at the hospital, but the one on the right—’

‘You saw him there?’ Harry interrupted.

‘No, no, I was just wondering if it was—’

‘Yes, it is, it’s the Chief of Police,’ Harry said, wanting to take the picture back, but Silje placed her hand on his.

‘Harry?’

He could feel the heat from her soft palm on his hand. Waiting.

‘I’ve seen them before. Together. What’s the other man’s name?’

‘Truls Berntsen. Where?’

‘They were together on the firing range in Økern not so long ago.’