She looked out the window, at the rear of the recently finished Munch Museum. No one who had bought their apartment prior to construction in Oslobukta had thought it would be so massive and ugly. People had been fooled by the drawings where the museum had a glass facade and was shown from an angle, rendering it difficult to see that it looked like that wall in the north in Game of Thrones. But that’s how it is, things don’t turn out as promised or expected, you’ve only yourself to thank for being taken in. Now the building cast a shadow on all of them, and it was too late.
She felt a fresh wave of nausea and hurried to get out of bed. The bathroom was on the other side of the room, but still it was so far! She had only been in Markus’s apartment in Frogner once. It was much smaller, but she’d rather have lived there. Together with... someone. She managed to make it to the toilet bowl before the contents of her stomach came up.
Harry was sitting at the bar in the Thief when the text message came.
Thanks for the tip-off. Yours sincerely, Sung-min.
Harry had already read Dagbladet. It was the only newspaper with the story, which could only mean one thing: that no press release had been put out yet, and that this journalist, Terry Våge, had a source in the police. Since it was impossible the leak could be a tactical manoeuvre on the part of the police, that meant someone was receiving money or other favours to inform Våge. It wasn’t as unusual as people believed — he had in his time been offered money by journalists on numerous occasions. The reason such transactions seldom came to light was that journalists never printed information which pointed towards the informant, that would after all be like sawing through the branch both parties were sitting on. But Harry had read most of the articles on the case, and something told him that this Våge was a little too eager and that it would backfire sooner or later. That is, Våge would walk away from it, yes, even with his journalistic credentials intact. It would be worse for the source of the leak. But the source was obviously unaware of how exposed he or she was as they were continuing to feed Våge information.
‘Another?’ The bartender looked at Harry, and was standing ready with the bottle over the empty whiskey glass. Harry cleared his throat. Once. Twice.
Yes, please, it said in the script. The one for the bad movie he had been in so many times, playing the only role he actually could.
Then — as though the bartender had seen the plea for mercy in Harry’s eyes — he turned to a customer signalling from the other end of the bar, took the bottle and left.
Out in the darkness the chiming of the bells of City Hall could be heard. It would soon be midnight and there would be six days left, plus the nine-hour time difference to Los Angeles. Not much time, but they had found Bertine, and finding a body meant new leads and the possibility of a crucial breakthrough. That was how he had to think. Positively. It didn’t come naturally to him, especially not to think so unrealistically positively as circumstances required, but hopelessness and apathy were not what he needed now. Not what Lucille needed.
As Harry left the bar and stepped out into the darkened corridor, he could see there was light at the end, like in a tunnel. As he drew closer, he realised that the light was coming from an open lift and could see a person standing half outside holding the doors. As though he were waiting for Harry. Or someone else — after all, he had already been standing there when Harry appeared in the corridor.
‘Just go ahead,’ Harry called out, signalling with a wave of his hand. ‘I’m taking the stairs.’ The man backed into the lift and out of the light. Harry had time to see the clerical collar but not the face before the doors slid shut.
Harry was soaked with sweat as he unlocked the door to his room. He hung up his suit and lay down on the bed. Tried to put thoughts of how Lucille was doing out of his head. He had made up his mind he was going to have a pleasant dream about Rakel tonight. One from the time they lived together and went to bed together every night. From the time he was walking over water, stepping on ice that lay thick and solid. Always listening out for cracks, always on the lookout for fissures, but also with the ability to live in the moment. They had done that. As though they had known the time they had together would run out. No, they didn’t live every day as if it were the last, but as if it were the first. As though they had discovered each other over and over again. Was he exaggerating, embellishing the memory of what they’d had? Maybe. So what? What had realism ever done for him?
He closed his eyes. Tried to picture her, her golden skin against the white sheets. But instead all he could see was her pale skin against the pool of blood on the living-room floor. And he saw Bjørn Holm in the car staring at him while the baby cried in the back seat. Harry opened his eyes. Yes, honestly, what was he supposed to do with realism?
His phone buzzed again. A message from Alexandra this time.
Will have DNA analysis ready by Monday. Spa and dinner on Saturday would be nice. Terse Acto is a good restaurant.
20
Wednesday
‘Well, it ought to be clear,’ Aune said, laying his copy of the police report on the duvet. ‘This is all textbook. It’s a sexually motivated murder carried out by a killer who will most likely do it again if he’s not stopped.’
The three people around the bed nodded, still absorbed in their own copies.
Harry finished first and looked up, squinting in the harsh light of the morning sun outside.
Then Øystein finished and let his sunglasses slide down from his forehead in front of his eyes again.
‘Come on, Berntsen,’ he said. ‘You must’ve read it before.’
Truls grunted in response and put down the printout. ‘What do we do if it’s a needle in a haystack?’ he asked. ‘Shut up shop and leave the rest to Bratt and Larsen?’
‘Not quite yet,’ Harry said. ‘This doesn’t really change anything, we assumed Bertine had been killed in a similar manner to Susanne.’
‘But we have to be honest and say it doesn’t back up your gut feeling about a rational murderer with a rational motive,’ Aune said. ‘You don’t have to decapitate the victim or steal their brain to mislead the police into believing it’s a sexually motivated murder with random victims. There are ways of mutilating which require less work and would leave pretty much the same impression of a murderer without any connection to the victims.’
‘Mm.’
‘Don’t mm me, Harry. Listen. The killer must have spent a long time at the scene of the crime, and thus have run a much higher risk than he needed to if his aim was mere misdirection. The brains are trophies, and now we see the classic sign of him learning by cutting off the entire head of the victim and taking it with him instead of sawing and sewing it back up while he’s at the crime scene. Harry, this walks, talks, smells and looks like a ritual killing with a whole range of sexual undertones and overtones, and that’s what it is.’
Harry nodded slowly. Turned to Øystein, who emitted a ‘Hey!’ as Harry snatched the sunglasses off him and put them on himself.
‘I didn’t want to say anything,’ Harry said, ‘but you nicked these from me. I left them in the office at the Jealousy Bar after that power-pop night when you refused to play R.E.M.’
‘What? We were supposed to play classic power pop. As for the shades, finders keepers.’
‘When they’re in a drawer?’
‘Children...’ Aune said.
Øystein made a grab for the sunglasses, but Harry was too quick and pulled his head back.
‘Relax, you’ll get them afterwards, Øystein. Come on, tell us that news you said you had instead.’
Øystein sighed. ‘OK. I talked to a colleague who sells cocaine—’
‘Taxi drivers are selling cocaine?’ Aune enquired with surprise.
Aune and Øystein looked at one another.
‘Is there something you haven’t told me?’ Aune said, shifting his gaze to Harry.
‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘Go on, Øystein.’
‘Yeah, so he put me on to Røed’s regular dealer. A guy we call Al. And he was actually at that party. But he said he was upstaged by a guy who had such primo blanco that he just had to pack his stuff away. I asked who he was, but Al didn’t know him, he was wearing a face mask and sunglasses. The weird thing, Al said, was that even though the guy had the best, purest blow he had ever snorted in Oslo, the guy behaved like an amateur.’
‘How so?’
‘It’s something you notice straight away. The pros are relaxed because they know what they’re doing, while at the same time they’re constantly scanning their surroundings like antelopes at a watering hole. They know which pocket they have the stuff in should the cops show up and they need to get rid of it in two seconds. Al said this guy was jumpy, only looked at the person he was talking to and had to rummage through his pockets to find the bags. But the most amateurish was that he hadn’t diluted the product more, if he’d done it at all. And that he gave out free samples.’
‘To everyone?’
‘No, no. I mean, this was a fancy party. You know, people from nice backgrounds. Some of them do coke, but not in front of the neighbours. They went with Røed into his apartment, the guy with the face mask, two girls, plus Al. The guy arranged a few lines on the glass table in the living room, which apparently also looked like something he’d picked up on YouTube and said Røed had to test it. But Røed being, like, all gentlemanly, said the others had to have a taste first. Then Al made to do just that, I mean, he wanted to test this stuff out. But the guy grabbed hold of Al’s arm and yanked him away from the table, scratched his arm so bad it bled, like, he totally panicked. Al had to calm the guy down. The guy said it was only for Røed, but Røed said that at his place people had to behave themselves and that the girls went first, otherwise he could get the hell out. And then the guy backed down.’
‘Did Al know the girls?’
‘No. And yes, I asked if they were the two girls who were missing, but he hadn’t even heard about them.’
‘Really?’ Aune said. ‘It’s been front-page news for weeks.’
‘Yeah, but people in the junkie community live in — how would you say it? — an alternative world. These guys don’t know who the Prime Minster of Norway is, put it like that. But, believe me, they know the price per gram in every Norwegian city of every bloody drug Our Lord has blessed this planet with. So, I showed Al pictures of the girls, and he thought he recognised them, Susanne at least, who he thinks he sold some E and coke to before, but he wasn’t sure. Anyway, the girls each did a line, and then it was Røed’s turn. But then his wife walked in, starts roaring about how he’s promised to quit. Røed doesn’t give a shit, already has the straw in his nose, takes a breath, probably planning on snorting every line left in one go and then...’ Øystein began to chortle. ‘Then...’ He bent forward, unable to stop laughing, wiping away tears.
‘And then?’ Aune said impatiently.
‘Then the idiot sneezes! Blows all the cocaine off the table, just tears and snot all over the glass. He looks in desperation at the guy in the face mask and asks for some fresh lines, right? But the guy doesn’t have any more, that was the lot, and he’s also desperate, and goes down on his knees to try and salvage what he can. But the balcony door is open, and there’s a draught, and now the powder is here, there and everywhere. Can you believe that shit?’
Øystein put his head back and roared with laughter. Truls laughed his grunted laugh. Even Harry broke into a smile.
‘So Al goes into the kitchen with Røed, where the wife can’t see them, opens his bag, and Røed gets a few lines of blanco from there. Because, yeah, I forgot to say, the stuff the guy with the face mask had, it wasn’t blanco, it was green cocaine.’
‘Green?’
‘Yeah,’ Øystein said. ‘That’s why Al was so keen to test it. I’ve heard it can show up on the street in the States, but no one’s ever seen it in Oslo. On the street the purest blanco you get is max forty-five per cent, but they say green’s a lot higher. Apparently it’s to do with residue from the colour of the coca leaves.’
Harry turned to Truls. ‘Green cocaine, huh?’
‘Don’t look at me,’ Truls said, ‘I haven’t a clue how it wound up there.’
‘Fucking hell, was it you?’ Øystein asked. ‘Incognito in a face mask and sungla—’
‘Shut up! You’re the bloody pusher, not me.’
‘Why not?’ Øystein said. ‘It’s genius! You skim, then step on it with something, the same way we used to fill our dads’ vodka bottles in the drinks cabinet with water. And then you sell direct so you cut out the—’
‘I don’t skim!’ Truls’s forehead had turned dark red, his eyes were bulging. ‘And I don’t cut. I don’t even know what levamisole is, for fuck’s sake!’
‘Oh?’ Øystein said, looking like he was enjoying himself. ‘Then how do you know it was mixed with levamisole?’
‘Because it said so in the report, and the reports are on BL!’ Truls bellowed.
‘Excuse me.’
They all turned to the door, where two nurses were standing.
‘We think it’s nice that Ståle gets so many visitors, but we can’t allow him and Jibran to be disturbed by—’
‘Apologies, Kari,’ Aune said. ‘Things can get a little heated when inheritance settlements are being discussed, you know. Don’t you think, Jibran?’
Jibran looked up and removed his headphones. ‘What?’
‘Are we disturbing you?’
‘Not at all.’
Aune smiled to the older nurse.
‘Well, in that case...’ she said, her lips pursed, as she looked reprovingly at Truls, Øystein and Harry before closing the door behind her.