‘Sorry,’ he said, trying to smile. ‘Nothing.’
Harry was standing in the duty-free in front of the shelf of whiskey bottles when a text pinged to let him know the car Krohn had arranged was waiting for him outside the arrivals hall. Harry answered ‘OK’, and — while he had the phone out — tapped on K.
Rakel sometimes joked about the fact he had so few friends, colleagues and contacts that one initial was all he needed for each.
‘Katrine Bratt.’ Her voice sounded tired, drowsy.
‘Hi, it’s Harry.’
‘Harry? Really?’ It sounded like she had sat up in bed. ‘I saw it was an American number, so I—’
‘I’m in Norway now. Just landed. Did I wake you?’
‘No. Or yeah, sort of. We have a possible double homicide, so I was working late. My mother-in-law is here looking after Gert, so I’m catching up on some sleep. Jesus, you’re alive.’
‘Apparently. How are things?’
‘OK. Not too bad, actually, considering the circumstances. I was just talking about you last Friday. What are you doing in Oslo?’
‘A couple of things. I’m going to visit Ståle Aune.’
‘Shit, yeah, I heard. Cancer of the pancreas, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t have the details. Have you time for a coffee?’
He noticed there was a moment’s hesitation before she replied: ‘Why don’t you come over here instead and have dinner?’
‘At your place, you mean?’
‘Yeah, sure. My mother-in-law is a terrific cook.’
‘Well. If it’s OK, then...’
‘Six o’clock? Then you’ll get to say hello to Gert too.’
Harry shut his eyes. Tried to recall the dream. Volvo Amazon. The whimpering child. She knew. Of course she knew. Had she realised that he knew as well? Did she want him to know?
‘Six o’clock is great,’ he said.
They hung up, and he looked at the shelf of whiskey bottles again.
There was a shelf of cuddly toy animals right behind it.
The car moved slowly through the mostly pedestrianised streets of Tjuv-holmen, Oslo’s most expensive five hectares, situated on two islands jutting out into the fjord. It was teeming with people visiting the shops, restaurants and galleries or just out for a Sunday stroll. At the Thief, the receptionist greeted Harry as though he were a guest they had genuinely been looking forward to putting up.
The room had a double bed of perfect softness, hip art on the walls and luxury-brand shower gel. Everything expected of a five-star hotel, Harry assumed. He had a view of the rust-red tower of City Hall and Akershus Fortress. Nothing seemed changed in the year he had been away. Yet it felt different. Perhaps because this — Tjuvholmen with all its designer shops, galleries, luxury apartments and mostly sleek facades — was not the Oslo he knew. He had grown up on the east side at a time when Oslo was a quiet, boring and rather grey little capital on the outskirts of Europe. The language you heard in the streets was mostly unaccented Norwegian, and people were white on the whole. But the city had slowly opened up. As a youth, Harry had first noticed this when the number of clubs grew, when more of the cool bands — not just those who played for 30,000 people at Valle Hovin — began including Oslo on their tours. And restaurants opened, a whole bunch of them, serving food from every corner of the world. This transformation into an international, open and multicultural city had naturally brought about an increase in organised crime, but there were still so few murders that they could barely keep a department of detectives employed. True, the city had already, for various reasons, in the 1970s become — and later remained — a graveyard for young people hooked on heroin. But it was a city without a Skid Row, a city where even women could in general feel safe, a sentiment also expressed by ninety-three per cent of the inhabitants when they were asked. And although the media did their best to paint another picture, the number of rapes over the past fifteen years had been consistently low compared with other cities, and street violence and other crime also low and still decreasing.
So one murdered and one missing woman with a possible link to each other was not a commonplace occurrence. Not so odd then that the Norwegian newspaper articles Harry had had time to google were numerous and the headlines large. Nor was it strange that Markus Røed’s name was mentioned in several of them. Firstly, everyone knew that the media, even the previously so-called broadsheets, survived on creating ongoing narratives about well-known names, and Røed was apparently a celebrity on account of his wealth. Secondly, the perpetrator in eighty per cent of all the murders Harry had investigated was a person closely linked to the victim. Therefore it was not strange that his prime suspect — for the time being — was the man who had hired him.
Harry showered. Stood in front of the mirror while he buttoned the only other shirt in his possession, which he had bought at Gardermoen. Heard the ticking of his wristwatch as he fastened the top button. Tried not to think about it.
It was less than a five-minute stroll from the Thief to Barbell’s offices at Haakon VII’s gate.
Harry walked up to the almost three-metre-high door and made eye contact with a young man in the lobby inside. He rushed over to open up, having obviously been assigned to wait for Harry. He let Harry through the glass airlocks and — following some momentary confusion when Harry explained he didn’t take lifts — up the stairs. On the sixth and top floor, he walked ahead of Harry through weekend empty office space to an open door where he stopped, allowing Harry to pass by him and enter.
It was a corner office, which looked to be almost one hundred square metres, with a view over City Hall Square and the Oslo Fjord. At one end stood a desk with a large iMac screen, a pair of Gucci sunglasses and an Apple iPhone on it, but no papers.
At the other end there were two people sitting at a conference table. He knew one of them as Johan Krohn. The other he recognised from the newspaper articles. Markus Røed let Krohn get to his feet first and approach Harry with hand outstretched. Harry gave Krohn a quick smile without taking his eye off the man behind. Saw Markus Røed fasten a button on his suit jacket with an automatic movement, but remain standing at the table. After shaking Krohn’s hand, Harry walked over to the table and did the same with Røed. Noticed they were probably much the same height. Estimated Røed had at least twenty kilos extra to wrestle with. Now, close up, Røed’s sixty-six years showed behind the artificially smooth skin, the white teeth and the thick, black hair. But OK, he had at least used better surgeons than some of the people he had seen in LA. Harry noticed a slight twitch in the large pupils in Røed’s narrow blue irises, as though he had a fascicular condition.
‘Have a seat, Harry.’
‘Thanks, Markus,’ Harry said, unbuttoning his jacket and sitting down. If Røed disliked the form of address or registered the riposte, his facial expression didn’t reveal it.
‘Thanks for coming at such short notice,’ Røed said, gesturing something to the young man in the doorway.
‘A certain momentum suits me fine.’ Harry let his gaze wander over the portraits of the three serious-looking men on the wall. Two paintings and a photograph, all with gold plaques at the bottom of the frame, all with the surname Røed.
‘Yes, well, of course things move at a different pace over there,’ Krohn said, the last two words in English, in what sounded to Harry like a slightly stressed diplomat’s small talk.
‘I don’t know,’ Harry said. ‘I think Los Angeles is laid-back compared to New York and Chicago. But you’re cracking on here too, I see. Office hours on a Sunday. Impressive.’