The Final Murder (27 page)

National Theatre, which normally generated its fair share of fights and arguments, was almost empty. Just one young woman in far too short a skirt and bad shoes was leaning into the wind.

She was stamping her feet and talking angrily into her mobile phone.

‘It’s easiest to drive down Dronning Maudsgate,’ said one of the policemen and put a piece of paper in his pocket.

‘Isn’t it better to …’

‘Dronning Maudsgate,’ he repeated crossly. ‘Have I been driving these streets for years, or what?’

The younger one backed down. It was his first shift with the big man in the passenger seat. Rumour had long since told him that it was best just to keep your mouth shut and do as you were told. There was silence for the rest of the journey.

‘Here we are,’ said the younger policeman, and he parked the car in a snowdrift on Huitfeldtsgate. ‘Can’t find anywhere better to park.’

‘Fucking hell,’ muttered the other man as he unfolded himself out of the tightly parked car. ‘If we have problems getting out again, you can sort it out. I’ll get a taxi. Just so that’s clear. I’m damned if I’m …’

The rest of what he said was lost in a mumble and the wind.

The young man followed behind his colleague.

‘That’s a bit of luck,’ said the older man, having managed to pick the lock on the door in a matter of seconds, sheltered by his broad back. ‘The door was open. Don’t need a fucking blessing from any crappy lawyer. C’mon, Constable Kalv0.’

Petter Kalv0 was twenty-nine and still clung to some of his childhood beliefs. He had thick, cropped hair and was well dressed.

Compared with the unkempt man in jeans and worn-down Doc

Martens who marched over to the lift in front of him, Petter Kalv0

looked as if he had just been accepted at West Point. By the stairs, he took on a stern posture and put his hands behind his back.

‘This is highly irregular,’ he said, his voice breaking. ‘I can’t…’

‘Shut up.’

The lift doors opened. His colleague walked in, Petter Kalv0

followed with some hesitation.

‘Trust me,’ laughed the older man. ‘Can’t survive in this job without taking shortcuts here and there. We have to take them by surprise, you know. Otherwise …’

He winked at him. His eyes were frightening, one blue and

brown, like an ice-cold husky.

They came to the third floor. The bald policeman pounded

on a green door with his fist before even looking at the name which was written in clumsy letters and attached with a drawing pin.

‘Ulrik Gjemselund,’ he read. ‘Right place then.’

Suddenly he took two steps back. With considerable force he

rammed his shoulder against the door. There was a shout from inside. The policeman aimed and ran at the door again. The door gave way, torn from its frame and hinges. It fell into the hallway in slow motion.

‘That’s the way we do it,’ the policeman grinned, and went in.

‘Ulrik! Ulrik GjemselundP

Petter Kalv0 stayed out in the corridor. He was sweating under his Burberry coat. ‘He’s mad,’ he thought to himself, dazed. ‘The man is raving mad. The others said I should just do what he says.

They said just to obey and keep my mouth shut. No one can

stand working with the guy after his suspension. A loner, they said. Someone who’s got nothing to lose any more. But I have got something to lose. I don’t want…’

‘PC Kalv0,’ his colleague yelled from somewhere inside the

flat, ‘Come here! Get your arse in here, for fuck’s sake!’

Reluctantly, he went in. He could see a TV in what was probably the sitting room. He crept closer.

‘Get a look at this whippersnapper,’ his colleague said.

A man in his early twenties was standing in the furthest corner, beside a sound system, under a shelf of books that ran right round the room, just below the ceiling. He was naked and clutching his sexual organ. His back and shoulders were hunched and his half length hair was standing out in all directions.

‘Got ‘im under control there,’ the older man said to Kalv0.

‘Now you stay here and keep an eye on our lad while I have a look around. He’s got such a grip on his dick you’d think he was scared of losing it. But we ain’t going to steal it. Relax.’

This was directed at the young man who lived in the flat, who was still cowering in the corner.

‘Take what you want,’ he stammered. ‘Take what… I’ve got money in my wallet. You can just take …’

‘Relax,’ Petter Kalv0 said.

He took a step towards the naked man, who raised his arm to

protect his face.

‘Didn’t you say?’ Kalv0 asked, surprised at the force of his anger. ‘Fucking hell, didn’t you tell him we’re from the police?’

The boy sobbed.

His colleague hissed:

‘Take it easy. Of course I did. The guy must be bloody deaf.

Don’t let him go anywhere.’

PC Petter Kalv0 tried to think clearly. He straightened his

collar, tightened his tie, as if it was more important than ever, during this alarmingly unlawful search, to be correctly dressed. He should do something. Stop it. He should stand up to his much older colleague. Phone someone. Raise the alarm. Protest. He could for example, go out to the car and call a patrol.

‘Just relax,’ he whispered instead and tried to force a smile. ‘His bark’s worse than his bite.’

His voice was weedy and lacked any conviction. He could hear it himself. He took another step towards the boy, who had at last let his arm drop.

‘Bloody amateur,’ his colleague complained by the door. ‘Ulrik Gjemselund is obviously a novice!’

In his hand he had a small plastic bag of white powder.

‘In the cistern,’ he said, smacking his lips. ‘That’s the first place we look, Ulrik. The very first place. Take me to a flat where I think there’s drugs and I walk blind out to the bog, lift the cistern lid and have a look. God, that’s boring.’

He stroked his rustred, peppered moustache. He shook his

head from side to side as he open the plastic bag, stuck his pinkie into the white powder and then tasted it.

‘Cocaine,’ he said and pretended to look surprised. ‘And here’s me thinking it was cornflour you kept in the bog. Or heroin or something like that. But instead it’s a nice amount of posh shit.

Dear oh dear. Stand fucking still P

The boy in the corner straightened up, terrified. He had been about to sink down to a sitting position, with his hands still holding his balls. He was crying without shame now.

‘Take it easy, little boy. Just stay there. Don’t you go anywhere.’

The policeman opened cupboards and drawers. He ran his

hands under all the shelves and behind all the books. Round all the picture frames and under all the cushions. He stopped by a computer desk in the kitchen. Four IKEA storage boxes were

stacked on the printer. He opened the top one and emptied the contents onto the floor.

‘Now, what have we here?’ he said contentedly. ‘Let me see.

Five condoms…’

He tore open one of the packets and held it up to his nose.

‘Banana,’ he sniffed. ‘If that’s what turns you on.’

He picked through the pile on the floor and pulled out a trumpet-shaped cigarette.

‘Look and you’ll find,’ he said. ‘A secret little joint.’

He smelt the contents.

‘Shit quality,’ he wrinkled his nose. ‘You obviously don’t know much about weed. Shame on you.’

Another box was emptied.

‘Nothing of interest here,’ said the policeman, and flicked

through a pack of cards before he emptied the third box.

It was empty, apart from an envelope.

‘Trond Arnesen,’ he read out loud. ‘That’s a familiar name.’

The boy in the corner forgot himself. He took four steps out onto the floor, stopped abruptly and put his hands to his face.

‘Please don’t,’ he wept. ‘Please don’t touch it. It’s not drugs.

It’s… nothing. Nothing…’

‘Interesting,’ said the policeman, and tore open the envelope.

‘You’ve made me curious.’

There were five smaller envelopes inside, held together with an old hairband. They were all addressed to Ulrik Gjemselund, in neutral capital letters that sloped slightly to the left. No sender’s details. The policeman pulled a letter out of the top one and started to read.

‘You don’t say,’ he murmured, and put the letter carefully back in the envelope. ‘Trond Arnesen. Trond Arnesen … Where do I know that name from?’

‘I beg you,’ the young boy pleaded; he wasn’t crying any more.

‘Please just leave them. They’re private, OK? You’ve got no

bloody right to just burst in here and …’

The policeman was astonishingly fast and nimble. Before Petter Kalv0 even realized what was happening, his colleague had crossed the floor in four strides and lifted the naked man with a firm clasp round his waist and dumped him back in the corner. His index finger was thrust deep into Ulrik Gjemselund’s left cheek.

‘Now you listen to me,’ he said in a low voice, and pressed his finger in even harder. He was about a head and a half taller than the boy. ‘It’s me who decides what’s interesting around here. All you have to do is stay put and do as I tell you. I’ve been wading through the shit that you and your kind make for nearly thirty years. And that’s a long time. A bloody long time. And I’m fucking bored of posh …’

It looked like his finger was about to go through the boy’s

cheek and into his mouth.

‘I think we should … now …’ Petter Kalv0 started. ‘I think perhaps …’

‘You shut the fuck up,’ hissed his colleague. ‘Trond Arnesen is the prick that was going to get married to Vibeke Heinerback. I’m pretty sure that the boys at Romerike and the NCIS will want to have a butcher’s at these letters.’

He let go. Ulrik Gjemselund sank to the floor. The rank smell of faeces filled the room.

‘You’ve shat yourself now,’ said the policeman with some resignation.

‘Go and wash yourself. Find some clothes. You’re coming

with us.’

‘Should I go with him?’ Petter Kalv0 asked. ‘So that he …’

‘He won’t jump out from the third floor. He’d die. He’s not that stupid.’

Ulrik Gjemselund kept his legs apart as he left the room. He left a trail behind him and Petter Kalv0 stepped to one side without thinking as the boy passed on his way to the bathroom. They

heard the sound of muffled sobs and running water.

‘Now let me just make one thing clear, Petter.’

The older policeman put his hand on his partner’s shoulder, a gesture that was in part threatening and in part friendly.

‘The door downstairs was open,’ he said quietly. ‘OK? And as to why it was necessary for us to break in here …’ He nodded at the hallway. ‘… Well, we heard shouting and screaming, as if someone was being attacked. Raped, maybe. OK?’

‘But he … he was alone!’

‘We didn’t know that beforehand. The shouting was really

alarming, don’t you remember? You do, don’t you? In fact, the guy was sitting here wanking and screaming, but how were we to

know that?’

‘I don’t know how …’

‘You don’t need to know anything, Petter. We found what we

were looking for, didn’t we? We’ve got a good bag of cocaine, a pathetic joint and a pile of letters that might be worth their weight in gold.’

Ulrik Gjemselund came out of the bathroom with a towel

round his waist.

‘My clothes are in the bedroom.’

‘Well, we’d better go there then, hadn’t we?’

‘But listen! Trond had nothing to do with… Trond doesn’t do drugs. I swear. He doesn’t know that…’

‘Come on now. Get dressed.’

They followed Ulrik into a chaotic bedroom and waited while

he put on some underpants, a T-shirt, a red woollen sweater, jeans and socks. The older policeman found a pair of boots on the shoe rack and flung them across the floor.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Put these on.’

‘I need to go to the loo again,’ said Ulrik and clutched his stomach.

‘Well,

go then, lad.’

The boy shot past them.

It was quiet. The policemen studied the destruction in the hallway.

The hinges on one side of the door had been torn away from

the doorframe. It would be pointless to try screwing the door back in place.

‘We can’t leave the flat open,’ Petter Kalv0 said.

The other man shrugged.

‘We’ll take any valuables with us,’ he said. ‘We can put the door back in place and then leave it like that.’

‘But…’

‘Only joking,’ chuckled the older man. ‘Call a patrol car. Ask them to get a locksmith or joiner or whatever the fuck they need to repair this.’

The toilet flushed. They heard the sound of a cabinet being

opened and shut.

‘Go on, tell me,’ Petter Kalv0 whispered, looking over at the bathroom. ‘What were the letters about?’

His colleague slapped his breast pocket.

‘Love letters,’ he whispered back with a grin. ‘Judging by

what’s written here, these two were at it like rabbits. And Trond, who was about to get married this summer. Tut tut.’

‘What are you going to do with the door?’ Ulrik complained

when he came out of the bathroom with his boots on. ‘We can’t just…’

‘Come on,’ said the policeman and grabbed him by the arm.

‘You’ve got more to worry about than a broken door. And don’t think that I don’t know what you did just now. In the bathroom.

You don’t open a cabinet when you’re having a shit, you know.’

‘I…’

‘Shut up. You deserve a few pills to calm you down. And it’ll be a while before the next ones.’

He gave a loud laugh and pushed the prisoner out towards the lift.

They had survived the meal and Johanne had to admit somewhat reluctantly that it had even been a success. Her mother had been on her best behaviour, warm, happy and utterly wrapped up in the children. Her father seemed to be healthier than he had been for a long time. He ate well and for once didn’t touch the wine. It irritated her that Isak was so familiar with everyone and everything,

but Kristiane was, as always, delighted to have them all together.