Harry knocked again. He waited, then gave up and turned to leave. At that moment he heard footsteps behind the door. He turned round. Saw a shadow through the frosted glass. The door opened.
Anders Wyller was wearing jeans, but his chest was bare and he hadn’t shaved. But he didn’t look like he’d just woken up. On the contrary, his pupils were big and dark, his forehead wet with sweat. Harry noticed something red on his shoulder – a cut? There was some blood, anyway.
‘Harry,’ Wyller said. ‘What are you doing here?’ His voice sounded different from the usual high, boyish pitch. ‘And how did you get in?’
Harry cleared his throat. ‘We need the serial number of Valentin’s revolver. I rang the bell.’
‘And?’
‘And you didn’t answer. I thought maybe you were asleep, so I came in anyway. I actually used to live in this building, on the fourth floor, so I know the doorbells aren’t very loud.’
‘Yes,’ Wyller said, stretching as he let out a yawn.
‘So,’ Harry said. ‘Have you got it?’
‘Got what?’
‘The Redhawk. The revolver.’
‘Oh, that. Yes. The serial number? Hang on, I’ll go and get it.’
Wyller pulled the door to, and Harry saw him disappear across the hall through the glass. The flats all had the same layout, so he knew that was where the bedroom was. The figure headed back towards the front door, then turned left into the living room.
Harry pulled the door open. There was a smell – perfume? He saw that the bedroom door was closed. That was what Wyller had done, he had closed the door. Harry looked automatically for clothes or shoes in the hall that could tell him something, but there was nothing there. He looked at the bedroom door and listened. Then he took three long, silent strides and was inside the living room. Anders Wyller hadn’t heard him as he knelt in front of the coffee table with his back to Harry, writing on a notepad. Next to the pad was a plate with a slice of pizza on it. Pepperoni. And the big revolver with the red butt. But Harry couldn’t see the handcuffs or iron teeth.
There was an empty cage in one corner of the living room. The sort people keep rabbits in. Hang on, though. Harry remembered the meeting where Skarre had pressurised Wyller about the leak to VG, when Wyller said he had told VG that he had a cat. So where was the cat? And did you keep cats in cages? Harry’s gaze moved on to the end wall, where there was a narrow bookcase containing a few textbooks from Police College, including Bjerknes and Hoff Johansen’s Investigative Methods. But there were some that weren’t on the syllabus, like Ressler, Burgess and Douglas’s Sexual Homicide – Patterns and Motives, a book about serial killings that he had referred to in recent lectures because it contained information about the FBI’s newly established ViCAP unit. Harry looked at the other shelves. There were what looked like family photographs, two adults and Anders Wyller as a young boy. There were more books on the shelf below: Haematology at a Glance, Atul B. Mehta, A. Victor Hoffbrand. And Basic Haematology by John D. Steffens. A young man who was interested in blood disorders? Why not? Harry moved closer and looked more carefully at the family photograph. The boy looked happy. The parents less so. ‘Why did you sign out Valentin’s things?’ Harry said, and saw Wyller’s back stiffen. ‘Katrine Bratt didn’t ask you to. Physical evidence isn’t the sort of thing you normally take home with you, even if the case has been solved.’
Wyller turned round and Harry saw his eyes dart automatically to the right. Towards the bedroom.
‘I’m a detective with Crime Squad and you’re a lecturer at Police College, Harry, so strictly speaking I should be asking you what you want the serial number for.’
Harry looked at Wyller. Realised that he wasn’t going to get an answer. ‘The serial number was never checked in order to trace its original owner. And that could hardly have been Valentin Gjertsen, seeing as he didn’t exactly have a firearms licence, to put it mildly.’
‘Is that important?’
‘Don’t you think it is?’
Wyller shrugged his bare shoulders. ‘As far as we know, the revolver was never used to kill anyone, not even Marte Ruud, because the post-mortem showed she was dead before she was shot. We’ve got the ballistic data for the revolver, and it doesn’t match any of the other cases in our database. So no, I don’t think it’s important to check the serial number, not while there are other things crying out for our attention.’
‘I see,’ Harry said. ‘Well, maybe this lecturer can make himself useful by seeing where the serial number leads.’
‘Of course,’ Wyller said, tearing the sheet from the notepad and giving it to Harry.
‘Thanks,’ Harry said, looking at the blood on his shoulder.
Wyller followed him to the door, and when Harry turned round on the landing he saw that Wyller had spread himself out in the doorway, the way bouncers do.
‘Just out of curiosity,’ Harry said. ‘That cage in the living room, what do you keep in it?’
Wyller blinked a couple of times. ‘Nothing,’ he said. Then he quietly closed the door.
‘Did you find him?’ Bjørn asked as he pulled out into the road.
‘Yes,’ Harry said, tearing a page out of his own notebook. ‘And here’s the serial number. Ruger’s an American company, can you check with the ATF?’
‘You don’t seriously think they’ll be able to trace that revolver?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because the Americans are pretty half-hearted when it comes to registering the owners of firearms. And there are more than three hundred million weapons in the USA. More guns than people, in other words.’
‘Frightening.’
‘What is frightening,’ Bjørn Holm said, putting his foot down harder on the accelerator to get a controlled slide as they turned to go down the hill towards Pilestredet, ‘is that even the ones who aren’t criminals and say they’ve got guns for self-defence use their guns to shoot the wrong people. There was an article in the Los Angeles Times saying that in 2012 more than twice as many people were killed in accidental shootings as in self-defence. And almost forty times as many shot themselves. And that’s before you even start to look at the statistics for murder.’
‘You read the Los Angeles Times?’
‘Well, mostly because Robert Hilburn used to write about music in it. Have you read his biography of Johnny Cash?’
‘Nope. Hilburn – is he the one who wrote about the Sex Pistols’ tour of the USA?’
‘Yep.’
They stopped at a red light in front of Blitz, once the bridgehead of punk in Norway, where you could still see the occasional Mohawk. Bjørn Holm grinned at Harry. He was happy now. Happy about becoming a father, happy the vampirist case was over, happy to be able to slide a car that smelt of the 1970s and talk about music that was almost as old.
‘It would be great if you could let me have an answer before twelve o’clock, Bjørn.’
‘If I’m not mistaken, the ATF is based in Washington DC, where it’s the middle of the night.’
‘They’ve got an office with Interpol in The Hague, try there.’
‘OK. Did you find out why Wyller had signed out those things?’
Harry stared at the traffic light. ‘No. Have you got Lenny Hell’s computer?’
‘Tord’s got it, he should be waiting for us in the boiler room.’
‘Good.’ Harry tried impatiently to stare the red light green.
‘Harry?’
‘Yes?’
‘Did it ever occur to you that it looked as if Valentin had left his flat very quickly, just before Katrine and Delta got there? As if someone had warned him?’
‘No,’ Harry lied.
The light turned green.
Tord was pointing and explaining things to Harry as the coffee machine spluttered and groaned behind them.