The Devil's Star Read online

  ‘Someone’s coming,’ he said. ‘I want you to stay there. Whatever happens. OK?’

  ‘It’s him,’ Beate said, nodding in Olaug’s direction.

  Waaler gave a brief nod. Then he was gone again.

  Beate put her hand on the old lady’s.

  ‘It’ll be alright,’ she said.

  ‘You’ll see that there’s been a mistake,’ Olaug said, without meeting her eyes.

  Eleven, twelve. Beate heard the door opening in the hall.

  Then she heard Waaler shout:

  ‘Police! My ID card is on the floor in front of you. Drop the gun or I’ll shoot!’

  She felt Olaug’s hand jerk.

  ‘Police! Put down your gun or I’ll be forced to shoot!’

  Why was he shouting so loudly? They couldn’t be more than five or six metres apart.

  ‘For the last time!’ Waaler shouted.

  Beate got up and took her revolver out of the holster she had in the belt across her shoulder.

  ‘Beate . . .’ Olaug’s voice shook.

  Beate looked up and met the old lady’s imploring eyes.

  ‘Drop your weapon! You’re shooting at a policeman.’

  Beate took the four steps to the door, pulled it open and stepped into the hallway with her weapon raised. Tom Waaler was two metres away, with his back to her. In the doorway stood a man wearing a grey suit. He was holding a suitcase in one hand. Beate had taken a decision based on what she thought she would see. That was why her first reaction was one of confusion.

  ‘I’ll shoot!’ Waaler shouted.

  Beate could see the open mouth and the stunned face of the man standing in line with the front door. Waaler had already thrust his shoulder forward to take the recoil when he pulled the trigger.

  ‘Tom . . .’

  She said it in a low voice, but Tom Waaler’s back went as rigid as if she had shot him from behind.

  ‘He hasn’t got a gun, Tom.’

  Beate had the feeling she was watching a film. An absurd scene where someone had pressed the pause button and the picture was locked in position, frozen; the picture quivered and jerked and time stood still. She waited for the crack of the gun, but it didn’t come. Tom Waaler was not crazy. Not in a clinical sense. He didn’t lack control where his impulses were concerned. That was presumably what had frightened her most at that time. The cold control as he abused her.

  ‘Since you’re here, anyway . . .’ Waaler said finally. His voice sounded strained. ‘. . . perhaps you can put the handcuffs on our prisoner.’

  31

  Saturday. ‘Isn’t it wonderful to have someone to hate?’

  It was almost midnight when for the second time Bjarne Møller met the press outside the entrance to Police HQ. Only the brightest of stars shone through the heat-haze over Oslo, but he had to shield his eyes against the flashbulbs and the camera lights. Short, stabbing questions rained down on him.

  ‘One at a time,’ Møller said, pointing to a raised arm. ‘And please introduce yourself.’

  ‘Roger Gjendem, Aftenposten. Has Sven Sivertsen confessed?’

  ‘At the present moment the suspect is being interviewed by the man leading the investigation, Inspector Tom Waaler. Until the interviews are over I cannot answer your question.’

  ‘Is it true that you found weapons and diamonds in Sivertsen’s case? And that the diamonds are identical to those you found on the victims’ bodies?’

  ‘I can confirm that this is true. Over there, yes please.’

  A young woman’s voice. ‘Earlier this evening you said that Sven Sivertsen lives in Prague, and in fact I have been able to find out his official address. It’s a boarding house, but they say that he left there more than a year ago and no-one seems to know where he lives. Do you?’

  The other journalists were taking notes before Møller answered.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I managed to get talking to a couple of the residents there,’ the woman’s voice said with barely concealed pride. ‘They said Sven Sivertsen had a young girlfriend. They didn’t know her name, but one of them suggested she was a prostitute. Are the police aware of this?’

  ‘We weren’t until this minute,’ Møller said. ‘But we appreciate your help.’

  ‘And we do, too,’ shouted one voice in the crowd, followed by all-male hyena laughter. The woman smiled uncertainly.

  A question in Østfold dialect: ‘Dagbladet. How’s his mother taking it?’

  Møller caught the journalist’s eye and bit his lower lip to prevent himself from snarling in anger.

  ‘I cannot make any judgment on that. Yes. Please.’

  ‘Dagsavisen. We’re wondering how it’s possible that Marius Veland’s body could lie for four weeks in the loft of his building, in the hottest summer ever without anyone discovering it.’

  ‘We are as yet uncertain about the precise timing of this, but it looks as if a plastic bag was used, similar to a suit bag which was then sealed and made airtight before being . . .’ Møller searched for the right words, ‘hung in the wardrobe in the loft of the student block.’

  A low mumble ran through the throng of journalists and Møller wondered if he had given away too much detail.

  Roger Gjendem was asking another question.

  Møller saw his mouth moving as he listened to the tune that was buzzing round in his head. ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You.’ She had sung it so well on Beat for Beat, her sister, the one who was taking over the main role in the musical, what was her name again?

  ‘I apologise,’ Møller said. ‘Could you repeat that, please.’

  Harry and Beate were sitting on a low wall set back from the jostling crowd of journalists, watching and smoking a cigarette. Beate had announced that she was a social smoker and took one from the packet that Harry had just bought.

  Harry himself didn’t feel any need to be sociable. Just to sleep.

  They saw Tom Waaler coming out of the main entrance smiling into the hail of flashbulbs going off. The shadows were dancing a victory jig against the wall of Police HQ.

  ‘He’ll be a celebrity now,’ Beate said. ‘The man who led the investigation and single-handedly arrested the Courier Killer.’

  ‘With two guns and stuff?’ Harry smiled.

  ‘Yes, it was just like the Wild West. And can you tell me why you would ask someone to put down a weapon they don’t have?’

  ‘Waaler probably meant the weapon Sivertsen was carrying. I would’ve done the same.’

  ‘Of course, but do you know where we found his gun? In his suitcase.’

  ‘For all Waaler knew, he could have been the fastest gun in the West from a standing suitcase.’

  Beate laughed. ‘You’re coming afterwards for a beer, aren’t you?’

  Their eyes met and her smile became fixed as her blush spread over her neck and face.

  ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

  ‘It’s fine. You can celebrate for us both, Beate. I’ve done my bit.’

  ‘You could come with us, anyway?’

  ‘Don’t think so. This was my last case.’

  Harry flicked his cigarette away and it flew like a firefly through the night.

  ‘Next week I won’t be a policeman any more. Perhaps I ought to feel that there is something to celebrate, but I don’t.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Something else.’ Harry got up. ‘Something completely different.’

  Waaler caught up with Harry in the car park.

  ‘Off so soon, Harry?’

  ‘Tired. What’s the taste of fame like?’

  ‘It was just a couple of photos for the papers. You’ve been there yourself, so you know what it’s like.’

  ‘If you’re thinking of that time in Sydney, they made me out to be trigger happy because I shot the man. You managed to catch yours alive. You’re the kind of police hero a social democracy likes to have.’

  ‘Do I detect the merest hint of sarcasm?’

  ‘Not at all.�
�

  ‘OK. I don’t care who they turn into a hero. If it improves the image of the police force, as far as I am concerned, they can paint a falsely romantic picture of people like me. At the station, we still know who the real hero was this time.’

  Harry pulled out his car keys and stopped in front of his white Escort.

  ‘That was what I wanted to say, Harry. On behalf of everyone who was working with you. You solved the case, not me or anyone else.’

  ‘I was just doing my job, wasn’t I.’

  ‘Your job, yes. That was the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. Shall we sit in the car for a second?’

  There was the sweet stench of petrol in the car. A hole rusted through somewhere, Harry guessed. Waaler refused a cigarette.

  ‘Your first task is arranged,’ Waaler said. ‘It isn’t easy and it’s not without danger, but if you carry it off, we’ll agree to make you a full partner.’

  ‘What is it?’ Harry said, blowing smoke over the rear-view mirror.

  Waaler ran the tips of his fingers along the wires coming out of the hole in the dashboard where the radio had once been.

  ‘What did Marius Veland look like?’ he asked.

  ‘After four weeks in a plastic bag, what do you think?’

  ‘He was twenty-four years old, Harry. Twenty-four years old. Can you remember what you dreamed of when you were twenty-four, what you expected from life?’

  Harry remembered.

  Waaler gave a rueful smile.

  ‘The summer I turned twenty-two I went inter-railing with Geir and Solo. We ended up at the Italian Riviera, but the hotels were so expensive that we couldn’t afford to stay anywhere. Even though Solo had brought with him the whole of the takings from the till in his father’s kiosk the day we left. So we pitched our tent on the beach at night and spent the days walking round staring at the women, the cars and the boats. The strange thing was that we felt wealthy. Because we were twenty-two. We thought everything was for us, presents lying under the Christmas tree just waiting for us. Camilla Loen, Barbara Svendsen, Lisbeth Barli, they were all young. Perhaps they hadn’t got to the stage of being disappointed yet, Harry. Perhaps they were still waiting for Christmas.’

  Waaler ran his hand over the dashboard.

  ‘I’ve just interrogated Sven Sivertsen, Harry. You can read the report later, but all I can tell you now is what’s going to happen. He’s a cold, calculating devil. He’s going to play insane. He’s going to fool the jury and create so much doubt for the psychologists that they won’t dare to send him to prison. In short, he’ll end up in a psychiatric department where he’ll show such sensational progress that he’ll be released after a few years. That’s what it’s like now, Harry. That’s how we deal with the human detritus we’re surrounded by. We don’t clean it up, we don’t throw it away; we just move it around a little. And we don’t see that when the house is a stinking, rat-infested hole, it’s too late. Just look at other countries where criminality has a firm foothold. Unfortunately we live in a country that is so rich at the moment that the politicians compete with each other to be the most open-handed. We’ve become so soft and nice that no-one dares to take the responsibility for doing unpleasant things any more. Do you understand?’

  ‘So far.’

  ‘That’s where we come in, Harry. We take the responsibility. We see it as the sanitation job that society dare not take on.’

  Harry sucked so hard that the cigarette paper crackled.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, inhaling.

  ‘Sven Sivertsen,’ Waaler said, keeping a lookout through the window. ‘Human detritus. You have to get rid of him.’

  Harry bent double and coughed the smoke back out.

  ‘Is that what you do? What about the other stuff? Smuggling?’

  ‘All our activities are carried out to finance this.’

  ‘Your cathedral?’

  Waaler nodded slowly. Then he leaned across to Harry and Harry felt him put something in his jacket pocket.

  ‘An ampoule,’ Waaler said. ‘It’s called “Joseph’s Blessing”. Developed by the KGB during the Afghan War for assassinations, but best known as a means of committing suicide for captured Chechen soldiers. It stops your breathing, but unlike Prussic acid there’s no taste and there’s no smell. The ampoule fits nicely up the rectum or under the tongue. If he drinks the contents dissolved in water, he’ll die in seconds. Have you understood the job?’

  Harry straightened up. He wasn’t coughing any more, but the tears stood in his eyes.

  ‘So, it’s supposed to look like suicide?’

  ‘Witnesses in the custody block will confirm that they omitted to search the rectum when he was brought in. It’s all arranged. Don’t worry.’

  Harry breathed in deeply. The fumes from the petrol were making him feel nauseous. The whine of a siren rose and died in the distance.

  ‘You thought about shooting him, didn’t you?’

  Waaler didn’t answer. Harry saw a police car roll up in front of the entrance to the custody block.

  ‘You never intended to arrest him. You had two guns because you planned to put the other one in his hand after you had shot him to make it look as though he’d threatened you. You put Beate and the mother in the kitchen, then you shouted so that they could testify afterwards that they’d heard you shout and that you had acted in self-defence. But Beate came into the hall too early and your plan went down the drain.’

  Waaler gave a deep sigh.

  ‘We’re cleaning up, Harry. The same way you got rid of the murderer in Sydney. The legal system doesn’t work; it was made for a different time, a more innocent time. And until it is changed we cannot allow Oslo to be taken over by criminals. But you must know all that since you see it at close quarters every day?’

  Harry studied the glow of his cigarette in the dark. Then he nodded.

  ‘I just needed to have the whole picture,’ he said.

  ‘OK, Harry, listen. Sven Sivertsen will be in cell number nine in the custody block up to and including tomorrow night. Until Monday morning, in other words. Then he’ll be moved to a secure cell in Ullersmo where we will not be able to get at him. The key to cell number nine is on the reception desk on the left. You’ve got until midnight tomorrow, Harry. Then I’ll ring Custody to be told that the Courier Killer has received his deserved punishment. Understood?’

  Harry nodded again.

  Waaler smiled.

  ‘Do you know what, Harry? Even though I’m happy that we’re finally on the same team, there is a little part of me that is a tiny bit sad. Do you know why?’

  Harry shrugged his shoulders. ‘Because you thought there were things that money couldn’t buy?’

  Waaler laughed.

  ‘Nice one, Harry. It’s because I feel I’ve lost a good enemy. We’re similar. You understand what I’m talking about, don’t you?’

  ‘“Isn’t it wonderful to have someone to hate?”’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Michael Krohn. Raga Rockers.’

  ‘Twenty-four hours, Harry. Good luck.’

  Part Five

  32

  Sunday. The Swallows.

  Rakel was in the bedroom studying herself in the mirror. The window was open so that she could listen out for the car and steps on the gravel leading up to the house. She looked at the photograph of her father on the dressing table in front of the mirror. It always struck her how young and innocent he seemed in the picture.

  She had her hair held in place with a hairslide, as always. Should she do it differently? The dress was her mother’s, a red muslin dress she had had altered. She hoped she wasn’t overdressed. When she was small her father often used to tell her about the first time he saw her mother in this dress and Rakel never grew tired of hearing that it had been like in a fairy tale.

  Rakel undid the hairslide and shook her head from side to side so that her dark hair fell over her face. The doorbell rang. She could hear Oleg’s footsteps as he ra
n down the hall. She could hear the enthusiasm in his voice and Harry’s deep laugh. Then she took a last look in the mirror. She could feel her heart beating faster. She went out the door.

  ‘Mummy, Harry’s . . .’

  Oleg’s shout died when Rakel appeared at the top of the stairs. She placed one foot cautiously on the top stair – her high heels suddenly felt unsteady, wobbly – but then she found her balance and looked up. Oleg was standing at the foot of the stairs and staring at her open-mouthed. Harry was standing beside him. His eyes were shining so much that she could feel the heat from them burning in her own cheeks. He was holding a bunch of roses in his hand.

  ‘You’re beautiful, Mummy,’ Oleg whispered.

  Rakel closed her eyes. Both side windows were rolled down and the wind brushed against her hair and skin as Harry carefully steered the Escort through the bends on the way down Holmenkollen. The faint smell of washing-up liquid lingered. Rakel moved the sun visor down to check her lipstick and noticed that even the little mirror on the inside had been buffed up.

  She smiled at the thought of the first time they had met. He had offered to drive her to work and she had had to help push the car to get it started.

  It was incredible really that he still had the same unroadworthy vehicle as then.

  She observed him out of the corner of her eye.

  And the same sharp bridge of the nose. And the same gently curved, almost feminine lips that contrasted with the other hard masculine features. And the eyes. He could hardly be called good-looking, not in the classical sense. However, he was – what was the word? – real. Real. It was his eyes. No, not his eyes. The expression in his eyes.

  He turned towards her as if he could hear her thoughts.

  He smiled. And there it was. The childlike softness in his eyes. The boy sitting behind them and laughing at her. There was a certain ingenuousness about the way he looked at her. An uncorrupted sincerity. Honesty. Integrity. It was a look you could rely on. Or you wanted to rely on.

  Rakel smiled back.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked and had to get his eyes back on the road.

  ‘This and that.’