Nemesis Page 3

'Is that important?' Ivarsson's voice had become sharp and impatient.

  Harry told himself he should keep his mouth shut. He should give up these Don Quixote-like offensives. People like Ivarsson would never learn, anyway.

  'Maybe not,' Harry heard himself say. 'Unless you're interested in those minute details which solve crime cases.'

  Ivarsson looked daggers at Harry. In the specially insulated room the silence felt like physical pressure on everyone's ears. Ivarsson opened his mouth to speak.

  'Knuckle hair.'

  Both men in the room turned to Beate Lonn. Harry had almost forgotten she was there. She looked from one to the other and repeated in a near-whisper: 'Knuckle hair. The hair on your fingers . . . isn't that what it's called . . . ?'

  Ivarsson cleared his throat. 'You're right, it was a hair. But I think it was - although we don't need to go into this any deeper - a hair from the back of the hand. Isn't that right, Beate?' Without waiting for an answer he tapped on the glass of his large wristwatch. 'Have to be off. Enjoy the video.'

  As the door slammed behind Ivarsson, Beate took the video cassette out of Harry's hand and the next moment the video player sucked it in with a hum.

  'Two hairs,' she said. 'In the left-hand glove. From the knuckle. And the rubbish tip was in Karihaugen, not Alnabru. But the bit about four years is right.'

  Harry gave her an astonished look. 'Wasn't that a little before your time?'

  She shrugged as she pressed PLAY on the remote control. 'It's only a matter of reading reports.'

  'Mm,' Harry said and studied her profile. Then he made himself comfortable in the chair. 'Let's see if this one left behind a few knuckle hairs.'

  The video player groaned and Beate switched off the light. In the moments that followed, while the blue lead-in picture illuminated them, another film unravelled in Harry's head. It was short, lasting barely a couple of seconds, a scene bathed in the blue strobe light from Waterfront, a long-defunct club in Aker Brygge. He didn't know her name, the woman with the smiling brown eyes who was trying to shout something to him above the music. They were playing cow-punk. Green on Red. Jason and the Scorchers. He poured Jim Beam into his Coke and didn't give a stuff what her name was. The next night, though, he knew. When they were in the bed adorned with a ship's figurehead, a headless horse, had cast off all the moorings and set out on their maiden voyage. Harry felt the warmth in his belly from the evening before when he had heard her voice on the telephone.

  Then the other film took over.

  The old man had begun his trek across the floor towards the counter, filmed from a different camera every five seconds.

  'Thorkildsen at TV2,' Beate Lonn said.

  'No, it's August Schulz,' Harry said.

  'I mean the editing,' she said. 'It looks like Thorkildsen's handiwork at TV2. There are a few tenths missing here and there . . .'

  'Missing? How can you see . . . ?'

  'Number of things. Follow the background. The red Mazda you can make out in the street outside was in the centre of the picture on two cameras when the picture shifted. An object can't be in two places at the same time.'

  'Do you mean someone has bodged the recording?'

  'Not at all. Everything on the six cameras inside and the one outside is recorded on the same tape. On the original tape the picture jumps quickly from one camera to another and all you see is a flicker. So the film has to be edited to get longer coherent sequences. Occasionally we call in people from the TV stations when we don't have the capacity. TV editors like Thorkildsen fiddle with the time code to improve the quality of the recording, not as jagged. Professional neurosis, I guess.'

  'Professional neurosis,' Harry repeated. It struck him that was a strangely middle-aged thing for a young girl to say. Or perhaps she wasn't as young as he had first thought? Something had happened to her as soon as the lights were off. The silhouetted body language was more relaxed, her voice firmer.

  The robber entered the bank and shouted in English. His voice sounded distant and muffled, it seemed to be wrapped in a duvet.

  'What do you think about this?' Harry asked.

  'Norwegian. He speaks English so that we won't recognise his dialect, accent or any characteristic words we might be able to link to earlier robberies. He's wearing smooth clothes which don't leave fibres we might be able to trace in getaway cars, bolt-holes or his house.'

  'Mm. Any more?'

  'All the openings in his clothes are taped over so he won't leave any traces of DNA. Like hair or sweat. You can see his trouser legs are taped round his boots, and the sleeves round his gloves. I would guess he has tape round his head and wax on his eyebrows.'

  'A pro then?'

  She shrugged. 'Eighty per cent of bank raids are planned less than a week in advance and are carried out by people under the influence of alcohol or drugs. This one was thought through and the robber doesn't appear to be on anything.'

  'How can you make that out?'

  'If we'd had better light and cameras, we'd have been able to magnify the pictures and see his pupils. But we don't, so I go by his body language. Calm, considered movements, can you see that? If he was on anything, it wasn't speed or any kind of amphetamine. Rohypnol, perhaps. That's the popular one.'

  'Why's that?'

  'Robbing a bank is an extreme experience. You don't need speed, just the opposite. Last year someone went into Den norske Bank in Solli plass with an automatic weapon, peppered the ceiling and walls and ran out again without any money. He told the judge that he'd popped so much amphetamine that he just had to get it out of his system. I prefer criminals who take Rohypnol, if I may put it like that.'

  Harry motioned with his head to the screen. 'Look at Stine Grette's shoulder at position number 1; she's pressing the alarm. And the sound on the recording is suddenly much better. Why?'

  'The alarm is connected to the recording device, and when it is activated the film begins to run much faster. That gives us better pictures and better sound. Good enough for us to analyse the robber's voice. And, then, speaking English doesn't help him.'

  'Is it really as reliable as they say?'

  'The sound of our vocal cords is like a fingerprint. If we can give our voice analyst, at the university in Trondheim, ten words on tape, he can match two voices with ninety-five per cent reliability.'

  'Mm. But not with the sound quality we had before the alarm went, I take it?'

  'It's less reliable.'

  'So that's why he shouts in English first, and then when he reckons the alarm has been activated, he uses Stine Grette as his mouthpiece.'

  'Exactly.'

  In silence they observed the black-clad man manoeuvring himself over the counter, putting the gun barrel to Stine Grette's neck and whispering into her ear.

  'What do you think about her reaction?' Harry asked.

  'What do you mean?'

  'Her facial expression. She seems relatively calm, don't you think?'

  'I don't think anything. Generally, you can't get much information from a facial expression. I would think her pulse is close on 180.'

  They watched Helge Klementsen floundering on the floor in front of the cash dispenser.

  'Hope he gets proper post-trauma treatment,' Beate said sotto voce and shook her head. 'I've seen people become psychological wrecks after being exposed to robberies like this one.'

  Harry said nothing, but thought that statement had to be something she had picked up from older colleagues.

  The robber turned and displayed six fingers.

  'Interesting,' Beate mumbled and, without looking down, made a note on the pad in front of her. Harry followed the young policewoman out of the corner of his eye and watched her jump when the shot was fired. While the robber on the screen swept up the holdall, sprang over the counter, and ran out of the door, Beate's little chin rose and her pen fell out of her hand.

  'We haven't put the last part on the Net, or passed it on to any of the TV stations,' Harry said. 'Look, now he's on the c
amera outside the bank.'

  They watched the robber walk across the pedestrian crossing - on green - in Bogstadveien before making his way up Industrigata. Then he was outside the frame.

  'And the police?' Beate asked.

  'The closest police station is in Sorkedalsveien just after the toll station, only eight hundred metres from the bank. Nevertheless, it took just over three minutes from the time the alarm went off until they arrived. So the robber had less than two minutes to make his escape.'

  Beate looked at the screen thoughtfully, at the people and cars passing by as though nothing had happened.

  'The escape was as meticulously planned as the hold-up. The getaway car was probably parked around the corner so that it wouldn't be caught by the cameras outside the bank. He's been lucky.'

  'Perhaps,' Harry said. 'On the other hand, he doesn't strike you as someone who relies on good fortune, does he?'

  Beate shrugged. 'Most bank robberies seem well planned if they're successful.'

  'OK, but here it was odds on that the police would be delayed. On Friday at this time all the patrol cars in the area were busy somewhere else, at--'

  '--the American ambassador's residence!' Beate exclaimed, slapping her forehead. 'The anonymous phone call about the car bomb. I had Friday off, but I saw it on the TV news. And if you think how hysterical people are nowadays, it's obvious everyone there would have been.'

  'There was no bomb.'

  'Of course not. It's the classic ruse to keep the police busy somewhere else before a hold-up.'

  They sat watching the last part of the recording in thoughtful silence. August Schulz standing waiting at the pedestrian crossing. Green changes to red and back again without him moving. What's he waiting for? Harry wondered. An irregularity? An extra-long sequence on green? A kind of hundred-year green wave? Alright. Should come soon. In the distance he heard the police sirens.

  'There's something not quite right.'

  Beate Lonn answered with the weary sigh of an old man: 'There's always something not quite right.'

  Then the film was over and the snowstorm swept across the screen.

  'Snow?' 4

  The Echo

  Harry shouted into his mobile phone as he hurried along the pavement.

  'Yes, really,' Rakel said over a bad line from Moscow. This was followed by a hissy echo: '. . . eally.'

  'Hello?'

  'It's freezing here . . . ere. Inside and outside . . . ide.'

  'And in the court?'

  'Well below freezing there, too. When we lived here, his mother even said I should take Oleg away. Now she's sitting with the others and sending me such hateful scowls . . . owls.'

  'How's the case going?'

  'How should I know?'

  'Well. First of all, you studied law. Secondly, you speak Russian.'

  'Harry. In common with 150 million Russians I don't understand a thing about the legal system here, OK? . . . kay?'

  'OK. How's Oleg taking it?'

  Harry repeated his question without getting an answer and held up the display to see if he had lost the connection, but the seconds on the conversation timer were ticking away. He put the phone to his ear again.

  'Hello?'

  'Hello, Harry, I can hear you . . . oooh. I miss you so . . . ohh. What's with the ha ha? . . . aah.'

  'There's an echo on the line. Lots of oohs, ohs and aahs.'

  Harry had reached the main door, pulled out a key and unlocked the hall entrance.

  'Do you think I'm too pushy, Harry?'

  'Of course not.'

  Harry nodded to Ali, who was trying to manoeuvre a kicksled through the cellar door. 'I love you. Are you there? I love you! Hello?'

  Harry looked up from the dead phone in bewilderment and noticed his Pakistani neighbour's beaming smile.

  'Yes, yes, you, too, Ali,' he mumbled as he laboriously tapped in Rakel's number again.

  'Call register,' Ali said.

  'Hey?'

  'Nothing. Tell me if you want to let your cellar room. You don't use it much, do you?'

  'Have I got a storeroom in the cellar?'

  Ali rolled his eyes. 'How long have you lived here, Harry?'

  'I said . . . I love you.'

  Ali gave Harry a searching look. Harry waved goodbye to Ali and gestured that he had got through. He jogged upstairs with the key in front of him like a divining rod.

  'That's it, we can talk now,' Harry said as he went through the doorway into his sparsely furnished yet tidy two-room flat, bought for a song some time in the nineties when the housing market was rock bottom. Every so often he thought the flat had used up his share of luck for the rest of his life.

  'I wish you were here with us, Harry. Oleg misses you, too.' 'Did he say that?'

  'He doesn't need to say it. In that respect, you're very similar.' 'You, I've just told you I love you. Three times. With the neighbour listening. Do you know what that sort of thing does to a man?'

  Rakel laughed. Harry loved her laugh, had done so from the very first moment he heard it. Instinctively, he knew he would do anything to hear it more often. Every day for preference.

  He kicked off his shoes and smiled when he saw the answerphone in the corridor blinking to tell him there was a message. He didn't need to be psychic to know it was from Rakel earlier in the day. No one else phoned Harry Hole at home.

  'How do you know you love me then?' Rakel cooed. The echo was gone.

  'I can feel myself getting hot in the . . . what's it called?'

  'Heart?'

  'No, it's back a bit and under the heart. Kidneys? Liver? Spleen? Yes, that's the one. I can feel my spleen heating up.'

  Harry wasn't sure if it was sobbing or laughing he could hear at the other end. He pressed PLAY on the answerphone.

  'I hope to be home in two weeks,' Rakel said on the mobile before being drowned out by the answerphone:

  'Hi, it's me again . . .'

  Harry felt his heart skip a beat and he reacted before thinking. He pressed STOP. But it was as if the echo of the words spoken in the charming, slightly husky woman's voice continued to wash back and forth between the walls.

  'What was that?' Rakel asked.

  Harry took a deep breath. One thought struggled to reach him before he answered, but it arrived too late: 'Just the radio.' He cleared his throat. 'When you're sure, let me know which flight you'll be on and I'll pick you up.'

  'Of course I will,' she said with surprise in her voice.

  There was a strained pause.

  'I have to hang up now,' Rakel said. 'Shall we talk at eight tonight?' 'Yes. I mean, no. I'll be busy then.'

  'Oh? I hope it's something nice for a change.'

  'Well,' Harry said with a sharp intake of breath. 'I'm going out with a woman anyway.'

  'Who's the lucky person?'

  'Beate Lonn. New officer in the Robberies Unit.'

  'And what is the occasion?'

  'A chat with Stine Grette's husband. She was shot during the Bogstadveien hold-up I told you about. And with the branch manager.'

  'Enjoy yourself. We'll talk tomorrow. Oleg wants to say goodnight first.'

  Harry heard small feet running and then excited breathing on the line.

  After they had finished speaking, Harry stood in the hall staring at the mirror above the telephone table. If his theory held true, he was now looking at a competent policeman. Two bloodshot eyes, one on each side of a large nose with a network of fine blue veins in a pale, bony face with deep pores. His wrinkles looked like random knife slashes across a wooden beam. How had it happened? In the mirror he saw behind him the wall with the photograph of the suntanned, smiling face of the boy with his sister. But it wasn't lost good looks or lost youth Harry's mind was occupied with, because the thought had finally made its way through now. He was searching his own features for the deceit, the evasion, the cowardice which had just made him break one of the few promises he had made to himself: that he would never, ever, come what may, lie to
Rakel. Of all the skerries in the sea for their relationship to founder on, and there were many, lies would not be one. So why had he told a lie? It was true he and Beate were going to meet Stine Grette's husband, but why had he not told her he was going to meet Anna afterwards? An old flame, but so what? It had been a brief stormy affair which had left scars, though no lasting injuries. They were only going to chat over a cup of coffee and tell each other the what-they-did-afterwards stories. And then each go their separate ways.

  Harry pressed

  Deep, husky laugh. The room seemed to vibrate to the same rhythm. No doubt about it, she had not changed. PLAY on the answerphone to hear the rest of the message. Anna's voice filled the hall: '. . . look forward to seeing you at M this evening. Just two things. Could you pop into the locksmith's in Vibes gate on the way and pick up the keys I ordered? They're open till seven and I've told them to keep them in your name. And would you mind wearing the jeans you know I like so much?'

  5

  Nemesis

  The rain was making speed lines against the pre - maturely darkened October sky in the light from the outside lamp. From the ceramic sign beneath, Harry read that Espen, Stine and Trond Grette lived here, 'here' being a yellow terraced house in Disengrenda. He pressed the bell and surveyed the locality. Disengrenda was four long rows of terraced houses at the centre of a large flat field encircled by blocks of flats, which reminded Harry of pioneers on the prairie taking up a defensive position against Indian attacks. Perhaps that was how it was. The terraced houses were built in the sixties for the burgeoning middle classes and perhaps the dwindling local population of workers in the blocks in Disenveien and Traverveien already knew that these were the new conquerors; that they would have hegemony over the new country.

  'Doesn't seem to be at home,' Harry said, pressing the button once more. 'Are you sure he understood we were coming this afternoon?'

  'No.'

  'No?' Harry turned and looked down at Beate Lonn shivering under the umbrella. She was wearing a skirt and high-heeled shoes, and when she picked him up outside Schroder's it had crossed his mind that she seemed to be dressed for a coffee morning.

  'Grette confirmed the meeting twice when I rang,' she said. 'But he seemed completely . . . out of it.'