‘Bye-bye,’ he whispered and clicked.
He reread his introduction and decided to change ‘Ullevalsveien’ to ‘Our Saviour’s Cemetery’ – it sounded better. Then he began to write, and this time it flowed.
At 7.00 people were reluctantly making a move homewards from the beaches although the sun was still beating down from a cloudless sky. It turned 8.00 and then 9.00. People wearing sunglasses were still drinking beer outside while the waiters in restaurants without terraces were twiddling their thumbs. It was 9.30, the sun was red over Ullernasen and then it plunged. Unlike the temperature. It was a tropical night and people were returning home from restaurants and bars to lie awake and sweat in their beds.
In Akersgata the deadline was approaching and the editorial staff sat down to discuss the front page for the last time. The police had not made any new announcements. Not that they were holding back information, it was just that four days after the murder it seemed as if they didn’t have anything else to say. On the other hand, silence allowed Gjendem and his colleagues even greater scope for speculation. It was time to be creative.
At roughly the same time in Oppsal the telephone rang in a house with yellow timber cladding and an apple orchard. Beate Lonn stretched out an arm from under the sheet and wondered if her mother, who lived on the floor below, had been woken up by the telephone ringing. Probably.
‘Were you asleep?’ asked a hoarse voice.
‘No,’ Beate said. ‘Is anyone?’
‘Right. I’ve only just woken up.’
Beate sat up in bed.
‘How’s it going?’
‘What can I say? Well, yes, badly, I suppose I can say that.’
Silence. It wasn’t the telephone connection that made Harry’s voice seem distant to Beate.
‘Anything new from Forensics?’
‘Just what you’ve read in the newspapers,’ she said.
‘What newspapers?’
She sighed. ‘Just what you already know. We’ve taken fingerprints and DNA from the flat, but for the moment there doesn’t seem to be a clear link to the murderer.’
‘We don’t know if there was malice aforethought,’ Harry said. ‘Killer.’
‘Killer,’ Beate yawned.
‘Have you found out where the diamond came from?’
‘We’re working on it. The jewellers we’ve talked to say that red diamonds are not unusual, but there’s very little demand for them in Norway. They doubt that the diamond came via Norwegian jewellers. If it came from abroad then that increases the likelihood that the perpetrator is a foreigner.’
‘Mm.’
‘What is it, Harry?’
Harry coughed loudly. ‘Just trying to keep myself up to date.’
‘The last thing I heard was that it wasn’t your case.’
‘It isn’t.’
‘So what do you want?’
‘Well, I woke up because I was having a nightmare.’
‘Do you want me to come and tuck you in?’
‘No.’
New silence.
‘I was dreaming about Camilla Loen. And the diamond you found.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yes. I think there’s something in that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m not quite sure, but did you know that in the past they used to place a coin on the eyes of a corpse before it was buried?’
‘No.’
‘It was payment for the ferryman to deliver the soul into the kingdom of the dead. If the soul wasn’t delivered, it would never find peace. Think about it.’
‘Thank you for the wisdom, but I don’t believe in ghosts, Harry.’
Harry didn’t answer.
‘Anything else?’
‘Just one small question. Do you know if the Chief Super starts his holidays this week?’
‘Yes, he does.’
‘You wouldn’t by any chance happen to know… when he comes back?’
‘Three weeks’ time. What about you?’
‘What about me?’
Beate heard the click of a lighter. She sighed: ‘When are you coming back?’
She heard Harry inhale, hold his breath and slowly let it out again before he answered:
‘I thought you said you didn’t believe in ghosts.’
As Beate was putting down the phone, Bjarne Moller woke up with abdominal pains. He lay in bed twisting and turning until 6.00 when he gave up and got out of bed. He had a long breakfast without any coffee and immediately felt better. When he arrived at Police HQ just after eight, to his surprise, the pains had completely gone. He took the lift up to his office and celebrated by swinging his feet onto the desk, taking his first mouthful of coffee and grappling with the day’s newspapers.
Dagbladet ran a picture of a smiling Camilla Loen on the front page under the headline ‘Secret Lover?’. Verdens Gang ran the same picture but with a different headline: ‘Clairvoyant Sees Jealousy’. Only the article in Aftenposten seemed to be interested in reality.
Moller shook his head, cast a glance at his watch and dialled Tom Waaler’s number. Timed to perfection. He would just have finished his morning meeting with the detectives on the case.
‘No breakthrough yet,’ Waaler said. ‘We’ve been conducting door-to-door inquiries with all the neighbours and we’ve talked to all the shops nearby. Checked the taxis who were in the area at the relevant time, had a chat with informers and gone through the alibis of old friends with tarnished records. No-one stands out as a suspect, let’s put it that way. And, to be frank, in this case I don’t think the man is someone we know. No evidence of a sexual assault. No money or valuables touched. No familiar features here and no bells ringing. This finger and the diamond for example…’
Moller could feel his guts grumbling. He hoped it was hunger.
‘So no good news for me then.’
‘Majorstua police station has sent us three men, so now we have ten men working on the strategic side of the investigation. And the technicians at Kripos are giving Beate a hand to go through what they found in the flat. We’re pretty well staffed, considering it’s the holiday period. Does that sound good?’
‘Thanks, Waaler, let’s hope it stays that way. As regards the staffing, I mean.’
Moller put the phone down and turned his head to look out of the window before going back to the papers. However, he remained in this position, with his head twisted round very uncomfortably and his eyes rooted to the lawn outside Police HQ. He had caught sight of a figure wandering up Gronlandsleiret. The person in question was not walking quickly, but he appeared at any rate to be walking in a moderately straight line and there was no doubt where he was headed: he was coming towards the police station.
Moller got up, went out into the corridor and called for Jenny to come in right away with more coffee and an extra cup. Then he went back, sat down and hastily pulled out some old documents from one of his drawers.
Three minutes later there was a knock at the door.
‘Come in!’ Moller shouted without looking up from his papers, a twelve-page letter of complaint written by a dog owner accusing the dog clinic in Skippergata of administering the wrong medicine and thus killing his two chow chows. The door opened and Moller casually waved him in as he perused a page about the dogs’ breeding, their awards from dog shows and the remarkable intelligence with which both dogs had been blessed.
‘My God,’ Moller said when he finally looked up. ‘I thought we’d given you the boot.’
‘Well. Since my dismissal papers are still lying unsigned on the Chief Superintendent’s desk, and will be doing so for at least the next three weeks, I thought I might as well turn up for work in the meantime. Eh, boss?’