Pause.
‘So why should I climb this mountain of all mountains?’
Another pause. Longer, as though waiting for someone to answer. Still with the half-smile. The pause dragged on. Too long, Hagen thought. The police are not fans of theatrical effects.
‘Because. .’ Bellman tapped a forefinger on the table beneath the lectern. ‘. . because it’s the hardest in the world. Physically and mentally. There’s not a moment’s pleasure in the ascent, only anxiety, toil, fear, acrophobia, lack of oxygen, degrees of dangerous panic and even more dangerous apathy. And when you’re on top, it’s not about relishing the moment of triumph, just creating evidence that you have actually been there, a photo or two, not deluding yourself into thinking the worst is over, not letting yourself slip into an agreeable doze, but keeping your concentration, doing the chores, systematically like a robot, while continuing to monitor the situation. Monitoring the situation all the time. What’s the weather doing? What signals are you getting from your body? Where are we? How long have we been here? How are the others in the team coping?’
He took a step back from the lectern.
‘K2 is an uphill climb in all senses. Even when going downhill. And that was why we wanted to have a go.’
The room was silent. Utterly silent. No demonstrative yawning or shuffling of feet under chairs. My God, Hagen thought, he’s got them.
‘Two words,’ Bellman said. ‘Stamina and solidarity. I had considered including ambition, but the word isn’t important enough, not big enough in comparison with the other two. So you may ask what’s the point of stamina and solidarity if there’s no goal, no ambition. Fighting for fighting’s sake? Honour without reward? Yes, I say, fighting for fighting’s sake. Honour without reward. When the Vennesla case is still being talked about years from now it’s because it was an uphill climb. Because it looked impossible. The mountain was too high, the weather too treacherous, the air too thin. Everything went wrong. And it’s the story of the uphill climb which will turn the case into mythology, which will make it one of the tales around the campfire that will survive. Just as most climbers in the world have never got as far as the foothills of K2, you can work all your life without ever being on a case like this one. If this case had been cracked in the first weeks it would soon have been forgotten. For what is it that all legendary criminal cases in history have in common?’
Bellman waited. Nodded as if they had given him the answer.
‘They took time. They were an uphill climb.’
A voice beside Hagen whispered: ‘Churchill, eat your heart out.’
He turned and saw Beate Lønn standing beside him with a mischievous smile on her face.
He nodded and watched the assembled officers. Old tricks maybe, but they still worked. Where, a few minutes ago, he had seen only a dead, blackened fire, Bellman had managed to blow life into the embers. But Hagen knew it wouldn’t burn for long if results were not forthcoming.
Three minutes later Bellman had finished the pep talk and left the podium with a broad grin and to great applause. Hagen clapped along dutifully, dreading his return to the lectern. For the certain showstopper, telling them the unit would be cut to thirty-five. Bellman’s orders, but which they had agreed he would not have to pass on. Hagen stepped forward, put down his folder, coughed, pretended to flick through it. Looked up. Coughed again and said with a wry smile: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.’
Silence, no laughter.
‘Well, we have a few matters to deal with. Some of you are going to be transferred to other duties.’
Stone dead. Fire extinguished.
As Mikael Bellman left the lift in the atrium at Police HQ he caught a glimpse of a figure disappearing into the adjacent lift. Was it Truls? Hardly likely, he was still suspended after the Asayev business. Bellman walked out of the building and struggled through the snow to the waiting car. When he took over the Chief of Police post he had been told that in theory he had the services of a chauffeur, but his three predecessors had all refrained from using them because they thought it would send the wrong signals, as they were the ones who had to deliver all the cuts in other areas. Bellman had reversed this practice and said in no uncertain terms that he wouldn’t let that kind of social-democratic pettiness threaten his productivity, and it was more important to signal to those further down the food chain that hard work and promotion brought certain benefits. The head of PR had subsequently taken him aside and suggested that if the press were to ask him he should limit his answer to productivity and lose the bit about benefits.
‘City Hall,’ Bellman said as he settled in the back seat.
The car glided away from the kerb, rounded Grønland Church and headed towards the Plaza Hotel and the Post Office building, which despite the excavations around the Opera House still dominated Oslo’s small skyline. But today there was no skyline, only snow, and Bellman thought three mutually independent thoughts. Bloody December. Bloody Vennesla case. And bloody Truls Berntsen.
Mikael had neither seen nor spoken to Truls since he had been forced to suspend his childhood friend and subordinate last October. Although he thought he’d glimpsed him outside the Grand Hotel last week in a parked car. It was the large injections of cash into Truls’s account that had led to his suspension. As he couldn’t — or didn’t want to — explain them, Mikael, as his boss, had had no choice. Of course Mikael knew where the money had come from: burner jobs — sabotaging evidence — which Truls had done for Rudolf Asayev’s drug cartel. Money the idiot had put straight into his account. The sole consolation was that neither the money nor Truls could point a finger at Mikael. There were only two people in the world who could expose Mikael’s cooperation with Asayev. One was the Councillor for Social Affairs and she was an accomplice, and the other lay in a coma in a closed wing of the Rikshospital.
They drove through Kvadraturen. Bellman stared with fascination at the contrast between the prostitutes’ black skin and the white snow in their hair and on their shoulders. He also saw that new layers of dope dealers had moved into the vacuum left by Asayev.
Truls Berntsen. He had followed Mikael through his childhood in Manglerud the way sucker fish follow sharks. Mikael with the brain, the leadership qualities, the eloquence, the appearance. Truls ‘Beavis’ Berntsen with the fearlessness, the fists and the almost childlike loyalty. Mikael, who made friends wherever he turned. Truls, who was so difficult to like that everyone actively avoided him. Yet it was precisely these two who hung out together, Bellman and Berntsen. Their names were called out one after the other in class and later at Police College, Bellman first, Berntsen tagging along afterwards. Mikael had got together with Ulla, but Truls was still there, two steps behind. As the years passed Truls had lagged further behind; he had none of Mikael’s natural buoyancy in his private life and career. As a rule Truls was an easy man to lead and to predict — when Mikael said jump, he jumped. But he could also get that blackness in his eyes, and then he seemed to become someone Mikael didn’t know. Like the time with the young guy they arrested, whom Truls blinded with his truncheon. Or the guy at Kripos who tried it on with Mikael. Colleagues had seen, so Mikael had to do something to avoid the impression he would let such matters go. He had tricked the guy into meeting in the Kripos boiler room, and there Truls had attacked the man with his baton. First of all, in a controlled way, then more and more savagely as the blackness in his eyes seemed to spread, until he appeared to be possessed, his eyes wide and dark, and Mikael had to stop him so that he didn’t kill the guy. Yes, Truls was loyal, but he was also a loose cannon, and that in particular worried Mikael Bellman. When Mikael had told him the Appointments Board had decided he was suspended until they were satisfied they knew where the money in Truls’s account came from, Truls had just shrugged as though it was of no significance and left. As if Truls ‘Beavis’ Berntsen had anything to go to, a life outside work. And Mikael had seen the blackness in his eyes. It had been like lighting a fuse, watching it burn in a mine gallery and then nothing happens. But you don’t know if the fuse is just long or if it has gone out, so you wait, on tenterhooks, because something tells you the longer it takes, the worse the explosion is going to be.