The Cockroaches Read online

  Fine, the neighbors here left him in peace, though they would appear in the corridor to check everything was OK if, on rare occasions, he should slip on a step and roll back down to the nearest landing.

  The backward rolls hadn’t started until October, after he had hit a brick wall over Sis’s case. Then the air had been knocked out of him and he had started dreaming again. And he knew only one way to keep the dreams at arm’s length.

  He had tried to pull himself together, take Sis to the cabin in Rauland, but she had become very withdrawn since the assault, and she didn’t laugh as easily as before. So he had rung his father a couple of times, although the conversations hadn’t been very long, just long enough to indicate that his dad wanted to be left in peace.

  Harry closed the door to his flat, shouted that he was home and nodded with satisfaction when there was no answer. Monsters come in all shapes and sizes, but so long as they weren’t waiting for him in the kitchen when he came home there was a chance he would have an undisturbed night’s sleep.

  4

  Thursday, January 9

  The cold snap came so suddenly that when Harry stepped out of the door he involuntarily gasped for breath. He looked up at the reddening sky between the houses and opened his mouth to release the taste of gall and Colgate.

  In Holbergs plass he caught the tram rattling down Welhavensgate. He found a seat and opened the Aftenposten. Another pedophilia case. There had been three of them over recent months, all Norwegians caught red-handed in Thailand.

  The leader reminded readers of the Prime Minister’s promise during his election campaign that he would intensify investigation of sexual crimes, including those involving Norwegians abroad, and demanded to know when the public would see any results.

  Secretary of State Bjørn Askildsen, from the Prime Minister’s office, commented that they were working with the Thai government to further investigative powers.

  “This is urgent!” the Aftenposten editor wrote. “People expect to see some action. It’s not right that a Christian minister can permit this outrage to continue.”

  * * *

  “Come in!”

  Harry opened the door and looked straight into Bjarne Møller’s yawning mouth. He was leaning back in his chair with his long legs sticking out from under the desk.

  “There you are. I was expecting you yesterday, Harry.”

  “So I was told.” Harry sat down. “I don’t work when I’m drunk. Or vice versa. It’s a kind of principle I have.” This was intended to sound ironic.

  “A police officer is a police officer twenty-four hours a day, Harry, sober or not. I had to persuade Waaler not to report you, you know.”

  Harry shrugged, indicating that he’d said all he had to say on the subject.

  “OK, Harry, we won’t discuss that now. I’ve got a job for you. A job which in my opinion you don’t deserve, but which I’m going to give you anyway.”

  “Would it make you happy if I said I don’t want it?”

  “Cut the Philip Marlowe stuff, Harry. It doesn’t suit you,” Møller replied brusquely. Harry smirked. He knew the PAS liked him. “I haven’t even told you what it is.”

  “I assume from the fact that you send a car to get me in my free time it’s not to put me on traffic duty.”

  “Exactly, so why don’t you let me finish?”

  Harry gave a brief, dry chuckle and leaned forward in his chair. “Can we speak our minds, PAS?”

  What mind? Møller almost asked, but limited himself to a nod.

  “I’m not the man for important assignments right now, boss. I suppose you’ve seen how things are going at the moment. Or how things are not going. Or barely going. I do my job, the routine stuff, try not to get in anyone’s way and clock in and out in a sober condition. I’d give the job to one of the other boys if I were you.”

  Møller sighed, laboriously drew up his legs and got to his feet.

  “Can I speak my mind, Harry? Had it been up to me, someone else would have got the job. But they want you. So it would be a great favor to me, Harry …”

  Harry looked up warily. Bjarne Møller had helped him out of enough scrapes over the last year for him to know that it was just a question of time before he had to start repaying the debt.

  “Hang on! Who are they?”

  “People in high positions. People who can make my life hell if they don’t get what they want.”

  “And what will I get to take on the job?”

  Møller knitted his brows as fiercely as he could, but he had always found it difficult to muster a stern expression on his open, boyish face.

  “What do you get? You get your salary. For the duration. For Christ’s sake, what do you get!”

  “Ah, I’m in the picture now, boss. Some of those high-up people reckon that officer who cleared up the case in Sydney last year must be one hell of a guy, and it’s your job to make him toe the line. Am I wrong?”

  “Harry, please don’t push this one too far.”

  “I’m not wrong. I wasn’t wrong yesterday when I saw Waaler’s face, either. That’s why I’ve already slept on it and this is my suggestion: I’m a good boy, I turn up for work, and when I’ve finished, you give me two detectives full-time for two months and complete access to all our data.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “If this is about your sister’s rape case, I’m afraid I have to say no, Harry. The case was closed, once and for all, remember?”

  “I remember, boss. I remember the report in which it was stated she had Down’s syndrome and that therefore it was not inconceivable that she’d made up the rape to hide the fact that she’d become pregnant by a casual acquaintance. Yes, indeed, I do remember.”

  “There was no concrete—”

  “She wasn’t hiding anything. Jesus Christ, man, I went to her flat in Sogn and in the bathroom I saw her bra in the laundry basket, drenched with blood. He had threatened to cut off her nipples. She was terrified. She thinks everyone is like she is, and when this guy dressed in a suit bought her a meal and asked if she fancied seeing a film in his hotel room she just thought he was being nice. And even if she had remembered the room number, it would have been hoovered, cleaned and the bed changed more than twenty times since she was raped. There wouldn’t be much concrete evidence.”

  “No one remembered any bloodstained sheets—”

  “I’ve worked in hotels, Møller. You’d be surprised how many bloodstained sheets you change over a couple of weeks. People bleed all the bloody time.”

  Møller vigorously shook his head. “Sorry. You had your chance to prove it, Harry.”

  “It wasn’t enough, boss. It wasn’t enough.”

  “It’s never enough. But you have to draw a line somewhere. With our resources—”

  “Well, give me a free hand. For a month.”

  Møller suddenly raised his head with one eye closed. Harry knew he’d been rumbled.

  “You cunning bastard. You’ve wanted the job all the time, haven’t you? You just had to do a bit of bartering first.”

  Harry stuck out his lower lip and waggled his head from side to side. Møller looked out of the window. Then he sighed.

  “OK, Harry. I’ll see what I can do. But if you mess up I’ll have to make a couple of decisions I know some people on the force think I should have made a long time ago. And you know what that means, don’t you?”

  “Boot up the arse, boss,” Harry smiled. “What’s the job?”

  “I hope your summer suit is dry-cleaned and you can remember where you last put your passport. Your plane goes in twelve hours to a faraway destination.”

  “The further the better, PAS.”

  Harry was sitting on a chair by the door in the cramped flat in Sogn. His sister was sitting by the window watching the snowflakes in the light from the street lamp below. She sniffed a couple of times. Since she had her back to him Harry couldn’t see whether it was
because of a cold or his imminent departure. She had lived in sheltered housing for two years now and was managing well under the circumstances. After the rape and the abortion Harry had taken along some clothes and a toilet bag and moved in, but it wasn’t long before she told him enough was enough. She was a big girl now.

  “I’ll be back soon, Sis.”

  “When?”

  She was sitting so close to the window that condensation formed into a rose whenever she spoke.

  Harry sat behind her and placed a hand on her back. He could feel from the gentle tremble that she was about to cry.

  “When I’ve caught the baddies I’ll be straight back home.”

  “Is it …?”

  “No, it’s not him. I’ll catch him afterward. Have you talked to Dad today?”

  She shook her head. He sighed.

  “If he doesn’t ring I want you to ring him. Can you do that for me, Sis?”

  “Pappa never says anything,” she whispered.

  “Pappa’s sad because Mamma died, Sis.”

  “But it’s so long ago.”

  “That’s why it’s time we got him talking again, Sis, and you’ll have to help me. Will you do that? Will you do that, Sis?”

  She turned without a word, put her arms around him and buried her head in his neck.

  He stroked her hair and could feel his shirt getting wet.

  The suitcase was packed. Harry had rung Ståle Aune and told him he was flying to Bangkok on business. He hadn’t had a lot to say and Harry didn’t quite know why he had rung him. Perhaps because it was good to tell someone who might wonder where he was? Harry didn’t think it was a great idea to ring the bar staff at Schrøder’s.

  “Take the vitamin B shots I gave you,” Aune said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Makes life easier if you want to be sober. New environment, Harry. It could be a good start, you know.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Thinking’s not enough, Harry.”

  “I know. That’s why I don’t need to take the shots.”

  One of the boys from the hostel further up the street was leaning against the wall and shivering in a tight denim jacket while puffing away at a fag as Harry eased his suitcase into the boot of the taxi.

  “Going away?”

  “Yep.”

  “South?”

  “Bangkok.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yep.”

  “Say no more.”

  He gave Harry a thumbs-up and winked.

  Harry took the ticket from the woman behind the check-in desk and turned.

  “Harry Hole?” The man with the steel-rimmed glasses eyed him with a sad smile.

  “And you are?”

  “Dagfinn Torhus from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We’d like to wish you luck. And assure ourselves that you’ve understood the … delicacy of this assignment. After all, everything has moved with such haste.”

  “Thank you for the thought. I’ve understood that it is my job to find a murderer without making too much of a splash. Møller has given me instructions.”

  “Good. Discretion is vital. Don’t trust anyone. Not even officials who claim to be working for the Ministry. They might turn out to be from, well, for example, Dagbladet.”

  Torhus opened his mouth as if to laugh, but Harry could see he was serious.

  “Dagbladet journalists don’t wear the Ministry badge on their lapel, herr Torhus. Or a jacket in January. By the way, I’ve seen from the papers that you’re my contact in the Ministry.”

  Torhus nodded, mostly to himself. Then he jutted out his chin and lowered his voice by half a tone.

  “Your plane goes soon, so I won’t hold you up much longer. Just listen to what I have to say.”

  He removed his hands from his jacket pockets and folded them in front of him.

  “How old are you, Hole? Thirty-three? Thirty-four? You still have a career in front of you. I’ve been doing a bit of digging, you see. You’re talented and it’s obvious people high up like you. And protect you. That can carry on for as long as things go well. But it won’t take much for you to land flat on your arse and you could easily drag your pals down with you. And then you’ll find that your so-called friends are suddenly over the hills and far away. So try to stay on your feet, Hole. For everyone’s sake. This is well-meant advice from an old ice-skater.” He smiled with his mouth, but his eyes were studying Harry closely. “You know what, Hole. I always have such a depressing sense of something finishing when I come to Fornebu Airport. Something finishing and something new starting.”

  “Really?” Harry said, wondering if he had time for a beer at the bar before the gate closed. “Well, now and then that can be good. A renewal, I mean.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Torhus said. “Let us hope so.”

  5

  Friday, January 10

  Harry Hole straightened his sunglasses and looked down the row of taxis outside Don Mueang International Airport. He felt like he had entered a bathroom and someone had just turned on a scalding hot shower. He knew the secret to tackling high humidity was to ignore it. Let the sweat pour down you and think about something else. The light was worse. It pierced the cheap, dark plastic glasses through to his shiny alcoholic eyes, and cranked up the headache that until then had only been rumbling in his temples.

  “Meter taxi or 250 baht, sir?”

  Harry tried to concentrate on what the taxi driver was saying. The trip had been hell. The bookshop at the airport in Zurich sold only German books, and they had shown Free Willy 2 on the plane.

  “Meter’s fine,” Harry said.

  A garrulous Dane next to him had chosen to turn a blind eye to the fact that he was plastered and had showered him with advice about how to avoid being cheated in Thailand, clearly an inexhaustible subject of conversation. He must have been of the opinion that Norwegians were charmingly naive people whom it was every Dane’s duty to save from con tricks.

  “You have to haggle over everything,” he’d said. “That’s the idea, you know.”

  “And what if I don’t?”

  “You’ll ruin it for us.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You’ll be helping to raise prices, to make Thailand more expensive for everyone else.”

  Harry had studied the man, who was wearing a beige Marlboro shirt and new leather sandals, and decided to drink some more.

  “Surasak Road 111,” Harry said and the driver smiled, put the suitcase in the boot and held the door open for Harry, who crawled in and noticed the wheel was on the right-hand side.

  “In Norway we complain about the English insisting on driving on the left,” he said as they drove onto the motorway. “But recently I heard more people in the world drive on the left than on the right. Do you know why?”

  The driver glanced at the mirror with an even broader smile.

  “Surasak Road, yes?”

  “Because they drive on the left in China,” Harry mumbled and was glad the motorway cut through the misty skyscraper landscape like a straight, gray arrow. He could sense that a couple of sudden bends would be enough to release the Swissair omelette onto the rear seat.

  “Why isn’t the meter running?”

  “Surasak Road, five hundred baht, yes?”

  Harry leaned back in the seat and looked up at the sky. Well, he looked up, for there was no sky to be seen, just a hazy vault lit by a sun he couldn’t see, either. Bangkok, the City of Angels. The angels wore masks, cut the air with a knife and tried to remember what color the sky had been in earlier times.

  He must have fallen asleep because when he opened his eyes the car wasn’t moving. He hitched himself up on the seat and saw they were surrounded by vehicles. Small, open shops and workshops lay cheek by jowl along pavements milling with people who all seemed to know where they were going. And they were in a hurry to get there. The driver had opened a window and a cacophony of urban sounds merged with the radio. There was a smell of exhaust and s
weat in the boiling hot car.

  “Traffic jam?”

  The driver shook his head with a smile.

  Harry’s teeth crunched. What was it he had read somewhere, that all the lead you inhale ends up in the brain sooner or later? And it makes you lose your memory. Or did it make you psychotic?

  As if by a miracle the traffic suddenly began to move again, and motorbikes and mopeds swarmed around them like angry insects and launched themselves at crossroads with utter contempt for life and limb. Harry counted four fully fledged near misses.

  “Incredible there are no accidents,” Harry said to fill the silence.

  The driver looked in the mirror and smiled. “There are accidents. Many.”

  By the time they finally arrived at the police station in Surasak Road, Harry had already made up his mind: he didn’t like this city. He wanted to hold his breath, do the job and get on the first and not necessarily best plane back to Oslo.

  At the police station Harry was greeted by a young officer who introduced himself as Nho. He had a slim body, short hair and an open, friendly face. Harry knew that in a few years the expression would change.

  The lift was full and stank; it was like being thrust into a bag of sweaty sports clothes. Harry towered two heads above the others. One person looked up at the tall Norwegian and laughed, impressed. Another asked Nho a question and then said to Harry:

  “Ah, Norway. That’s … that’s … what’s his name now? … please help me.”

  Harry smiled and tried to splay his hands apologetically, but there wasn’t room.

  “Yes, yes, very famous!” the man insisted.

  “Ibsen?” Harry essayed. “Nansen?”

  “No, no, more famous!”

  “Hamsun? Grieg?”

  “No, no.”

  The man gave them a stern look as they got out on the fourth.

  “Welcome to Bangkok, Harry.”

  The Chief of Police was small and swarthy and had clearly decided to demonstrate that people knew how to greet in Western fashion in Thailand. He squeezed Harry’s hand and shook it enthusiastically with a beaming smile.