‘That was quick,’ Truls said.
‘Taxi,’ Harry replied.
‘Must be flush then. We could have done this over the phone.’
‘No,’ Harry said, sitting down. They had exchanged exactly twelve words when Harry called. Yes? Harry Hole here, where are you? Bjerke Racecourse. On my way.
‘Is that so, Harry? Have you got involved in shady business?’ Truls let out his grunting laughter, which along with his weak chin, protruding brow and general passive-aggressive demeanour had earned him the nickname Beavis. He and the cartoon character also shared a nihilistic outlook and an almost admirable absence of any sense of social responsibility or morality. The subtext of his question was of course if Harry had also got involved in shady business.
‘I might have an offer for you.’
‘The kind I can’t refuse?’ Truls said, casting a dissatisfied glance out at the track, where the announcer was listing the order of finishers.
‘Unless your betting selection comes in, yeah. You’re out of work, I hear. And have gambling debts.’
‘Gambling debts? Says who?’
‘It’s not important. You’re unemployed, in any case.’
‘I’m not that unemployed. I’m receiving a salary without doing shit. So as far as I’m concerned they can take as long as they like trying to find some evidence, I couldn’t give a toss.’
‘Mm. I heard it was something to do with the skimming of a cocaine seizure at Gardermoen?’
Truls snorted. ‘Me and two others from Narcotics picked up the stuff. This weird, green cocaine. Customs reckoned it was green because it was so pure, as if they were like walking crime labs or something. We delivered it to Seizures who discovered there was a small anomaly in the weight in relation to what Gardermoen had reported. So they sent it for analysis. And the analysis showed that the cocaine, which was just as green as before, had been stepped on. So then they think we cut some of the cocaine with something else green, but screwed up by getting the weight slightly wrong. Or rather me, as I was the only one alone with the dope for a few minutes.’
‘So not only do you risk being fired but prison time?’
‘Are you stupid, or something?’ Truls grunted. ‘They don’t have anything close to proof. A few morons from Customs who think the green stuff looked and tasted like pure cocaine? A difference of a milligram or two in weight that everyone knows could be down to all sorts of things? They’ll bang on about it for a while, and then the case will be dismissed.’
‘Mm. So you’re ruling out them finding another guilty party?’
Truls leaned his head back slightly, looked at Harry as though taking aim at him. ‘I’ve got some stuff involving horses to take care of here, Harry, so if there was something you wanted to talk about?’
‘Markus Røed has hired me to investigate the case of the two girls. I want you on the team.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Truls stared at Harry in surprise.
‘What do you say?’
‘Why are you asking me?’
‘Why do you think?’
‘No idea. I’m a bad cop, and you know that better than most.’
‘All the same, we’ve saved each other’s lives on at least one occasion. According to an old Chinese proverb that means we have a responsibility for one another for the rest of our lives.’
‘Really?’ Truls sounded unsure.
‘Plus,’ Harry said, ‘if you’re only suspended, then you still have full access to BL96?’
Harry noticed Truls flinch when he heard mention of the makeshift, antiquated system for investigation reports in use since 1996.
‘So?’
‘We need access to all the reports. Tactical, technical, forensics.’
‘Right. So this is...?’
‘Yep, shady business.’
‘The kind of thing that can get cops kicked off the force.’
‘If it’s discovered, definitely. And that’s why it’s well paid.’
‘Yeah? How well?’
‘Give me a number and I’ll pass it along.’
Truls looked at Harry for a long time, thoughtfully. Lowered his gaze to the betting slip on the table in front of him. Crumpled it up in his hand.
It was lunchtime at Danielle’s, and the bar and the tables were beginning to fill up. Although situated a few hundred metres from the city centre and the hell of office complexes, it never ceased to surprise Helene that a restaurant located in a residential area got so many patrons on their lunch break.
She cast a glance around, scanning the large, open-plan premises from her small round table in the centre. Found no one of interest. Then turned her attention back to the screen of her laptop. She had found a site with equestrian equipment. There appeared to be no limit to the amount of products available for horses and riders, or the prices demanded for them. After all, most people involved with horses were well-to-do, and riding was an opportunity to flaunt that. The drawback for most people was of course that the bar to impress in this milieu was set so high that most people had already lost before they even got started. But was importing equestrian equipment really what she wanted to do? Or would she be better off trying her hand at arranging riding tours in Valdres, Vassfaret, Vågå or other scenic shitholes beginning with V? She slammed the laptop shut, sighed deeply and looked around again.
Yes, there they were, sitting perched along the bar that ran the length of the establishment. The young men in whatever suit they were flogging to estate agents at the moment. The young women wearing skirts and jackets or something else to make them look ‘professional’. Some of the women actually had jobs, but Helene could point out the others, the ones who were a bit too pretty, wearing skirts which were a bit too short who were more interested in what made a job superfluous, in short a man with money. She didn’t know why she continued to come here. Ten years ago, the Monday lunches at Danielle’s had been legendary. There had been something so deliciously decadent and couldn’t-give-a-fuck about getting drunk and dancing on the tables in the middle of the first day of the working week. But, of course, it had also been a statement about status; an excess only the rich and privileged could allow themselves. These days it was quieter. Now the former fire station was a combination of bar and Michelin-starred gourmet restaurant, a place where the elite of Oslo’s west side ate, drank, talked business, discussed family matters, built relationships and entered alliances that drew the distinction between those allowed within and those who would remain outside.
It was here, during a wild Monday lunch, that Helene had met Markus. She had been twenty-three years old, he was over fifty and filthy rich. So rich that people moved aside when he walked to the bar, everyone seemed to know what the Røed family were good for. And bad for. She had not been as innocent as she made out, of course, something Markus could probably tell after the first couple of times she stayed the night at his villa in Skillebekk. Could tell by her soundtrack to lovemaking, which was akin to something lifted straight from Pornhub, could tell by the pings from incoming messages on her phone all night and could tell by the way she arranged the cocaine in such even lines that he never knew which he should take. But he didn’t seem to mind. Innocence wasn’t something that turned him on, he claimed. She didn’t know if that was true, but it wasn’t so important. What was important, or one of the things that was important, was that he could facilitate the lifestyle she had always dreamt about. That dream was not about being a stay-at-home trophy wife investing all her time on the upkeep and improvement of the house, holiday home, social network and her own body and face. Helene left that sort of thing to the other parasitic bimbos on the hunt for a suitable host at Danielle’s. Helene had a brain and was interested in things. In art and culture, especially theatre and the visual arts. In architecture — she had long considered studying that. But her big dream was to run the best riding school in the country. It wasn’t a pipe dream indulged in by a stupid, fanciful girl, but a realistic plan drawn up at a young age by an academically capable and hard-working girl who had mucked out at more than one stable, progressed through the ranks, and eventually become a riding school instructor, a girl who despised the term ‘horse mad’ and knew what was required in terms of effort, money and expertise.