The Devil's Star Read online

  Sivertsen gulped. Crack. Major crack.

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ he whispered.

  Harry shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Waaler restricts what he tells his underlings and, as you know, I’m curious by nature. Do you, like me, want to see the big picture, Sivertsen? Or are you one of those who believe that you’ll get the full enlightenment when you’re dead? Fine. My problem is that, in my case, that’s still quite a long wait . . .’

  Sivertsen went pale.

  ‘Another smoke?’ Harry asked. ‘Or are you beginning to feel nauseous?’

  Sivertsen opened his mouth, seemingly on cue, tossed his head to the side and the next moment yellow vomit splattered against the brick wall. He sat gasping for breath.

  Harry glared at the drips that had ricocheted onto his trousers, went to the sink, tore paper off the roll, tore off another piece and gave it to Sivertsen. Sivertsen dried his mouth. Then his head slumped forward and he hid his face in his hands. His voice was tearful as he finally opened up:

  ‘When I came into the hallway . . . I was confused, but, naturally, I understood that he was playacting. He winked at me and twisted his head in such a way that I was meant to interpret the shouts as meant for someone else. It took me a few seconds to understand the scene. What I thought was the scene. I thought . . . I thought he wanted it to sound as if I was armed so that he had a reason for letting me get away. He had two guns. I thought the other one was for me. So that I was armed in case anyone saw us. I just stood there waiting for him to give me the gun. Then that bloody woman came and ruined everything.’

  Harry had taken up his stance with his back to the wall again.

  ‘So you admit that you knew the police were after you in connection with the courier killings?’

  Sivertsen shook his head.

  ‘No, no, I’m no murderer. I thought I’d been arrested for smuggling arms. And the diamonds. I knew that Waaler was in charge of all of this and that was why everything was going so smoothly. And that was why he was trying to let me get away. I have to . . .’

  More vomit splashed on the floor, a greener colour this time.

  Harry handed him more paper.

  Sivertsen began to sob.

  ‘How much time do I have left?’

  ‘That depends,’ Harry said.

  ‘On what?’

  Harry stubbed out his cigarette on the floor, put his hand into his pocket and played his trump card.

  ‘Do you see this?’

  He held up a white pill between his thumb and first finger. Sivertsen nodded.

  ‘If you take this within ten minutes of drinking Joseph’s Blessing there is a reasonable chance that you’ll survive. I got this from a friend who works with pharmaceutical products. Why, I’m sure you’re wondering. Well, because I want to strike a deal with you. I want you to testify against Tom Waaler and to say everything you know about his arms smuggling dealings.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Just give me the pill.’

  ‘But can I trust you, Sivertsen?’

  ‘I swear.’

  ‘I need a carefully considered answer, Sivertsen. How do I know that you won’t change sides again as soon as I’m out of sight?’

  ‘What?’

  Harry put the pill back in his pocket.

  ‘The seconds are ticking away. Why should I trust you, Sivertsen? Give me one good reason.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘The Blessing stops you breathing. Extremely painful according to those who have seen people take it.’

  Sivertsen blinked twice before he began to speak:

  ‘You have to trust me because that’s the logical follow-on. If I don’t die this evening, Tom Waaler will know that I’ve uncovered his plan to kill me. And then there’s no way back. He’ll have to get me before I get him. I simply don’t have a choice.’

  ‘Well done, Sivertsen. Go on.’

  ‘I haven’t got a chance in here. I’ll be done for long before they come to get me early tomorrow. My only chance is if Waaler is exposed and put behind bars as soon as possible. And the only person who can help me is . . . you.’

  ‘Bullseye. Congratulations,’ Harry said, getting up. ‘Hands behind your back, please.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Do as I say. We’ve got to get out of here.’

  ‘Get the pill . . .’

  ‘The pill’s called Flunipam and it’s only really any good for insomnia.’

  Sven gawped at Harry in disbelief.

  ‘You . . .’

  Harry was ready for the attack. He stepped to the side and punched hard and low. Sivertsen made a sound like air being deflated from a beach ball and folded in the middle.

  Harry held him up with one hand and secured the handcuffs with the other.

  ‘I wouldn’t be too worried, Sivertsen. I emptied the contents of Waaler’s ampoule down the sink last night. Any complaints about the taste of the water you’ll have to take up with Oslo Water.’

  ‘But . . . I . . .’

  They both looked down at the vomit.

  ‘Eyes too big for your belly,’ Harry said. ‘I won’t tell anyone.’

  The back of the chair in the duty room rotated slowly. A half-closed eye hove into view. Then it reacted, and the loose folds of skin slid back to reveal a large, glaring eye. ‘Griever’ Groth shifted his fat body surprisingly quickly out of the chair.

  ‘What’s this?’ he barked.

  ‘The prisoner from cell number nine,’ Harry said nodding towards Sivertsen. ‘He’s needed for questioning on the sixth floor. Where do I sign for him?’

  ‘Questioning? I haven’t been told about any questioning.’

  The Griever had taken up a stance a short way back from the reception desk with his arms crossed and his legs wide apart.

  ‘As far as I’m aware, we don’t usually tell you about that kind of thing, Groth,’ Harry said.

  The Griever’s eyes darted in confusion from Harry to Sivertsen and back again.

  ‘Relax,’ Harry said. ‘It’s just a few changes to the plans. The prisoner won’t take his medicine. We’ll find another way.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Of course not, and if you want to avoid hearing any more, I suggest you put the signing-out book on the desk now, Groth. We’ve got a lot to do.’

  The Griever stared at him with his grieving eye while rubbing the other.

  Harry concentrated on breathing and hoped that his pounding heart would not be visible from the outside. All of his plans could collapse like a house of cards at this point. Handy theme for metaphors. He had a terrible hand of cards. Not one single ace. The only thing he could hope for was that Groth’s addled brain would connect in the way he anticipated. An anticipation that was loosely based on Aune’s fundamental principle that man’s ability to think rationally when self-interest was at stake was inversely proportionate to intelligence.

  The Griever grunted.

  Harry hoped that meant that he had appreciated the point; that there was less risk for the Griever if Harry signed out the prisoner according to regulations. That way, later on, he could tell the detectives everything exactly as it happened. Instead of risking being caught lying when he said that no-one had come in or gone out at the time of the mysterious death in cell number nine. He hoped Groth was thinking at this very moment that Harry could take a weight off his mind at the stroke of a pen and that this was good news. No reason to double-check. After all, Waaler had said that this idiot was on their side now.

  The Griever cleared his throat.

  Harry scribbled his name on the dotted line.

  ‘March,’ he said, giving Sivertsen a shove.

  The night air in the car park outside the custody block tasted like cold beer in his throat.

  34

  Sunday Night. The Ultimatum.

  Rakel woke up.

  She had heard the door go downstairs.

  She rolled over in bed and looked at the cloc
k: 12.45.

  She stretched and lay still, listening. The feeling of sleepy well-being was replaced by the tingle of expectation. She would pretend that she was sleeping when he crept into bed. She knew it was a childish game, but she enjoyed it. He would just lie there breathing. And when she turned in her sleep and her hand happened to touch his stomach, she would hear him breathing faster and deeper. Then they would lie there without moving and see who could hold out longest, a kind of competition. And he would lose.

  Maybe.

  She closed her eyes.

  After a while, she opened them again. A nagging fear had entered her mind.

  She got up, opened the bedroom door and listened.

  Not a sound.

  She went over to the stairs.

  ‘Harry?’

  Her voice sounded anxious and it frightened her even more. She pulled herself together and went downstairs.

  There was no-one there.

  She concluded that the unlocked front door had not been properly closed and that she had woken up when it blew open.

  After locking it she sat down in the kitchen with a glass of milk. She listened to the creaking of the wooden house. The old walls seemed to be talking.

  At 1.30 she got up. Harry had gone back to his place. And he would never know that he could have won tonight.

  On her way to the bedroom a thought occurred to her and created momentary panic. She turned back. And gave a sigh of relief when she saw from the door of Oleg’s room that he was asleep in bed.

  Nevertheless, she woke up an hour later with nightmares and lay tossing and turning for the rest of the night.

  The white Ford Escort passed through the summer’s night like a rumbling, ageing submarine.

  ‘Økernveien,’ Harry mumbled. ‘Sons gate.’

  ‘What?’ Sivertsen asked.

  ‘Just talking to myself.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘About the shortest route.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘You’ll soon find out.’

  They parked down a small one-way street where a few detached houses had strayed into a zone of high-rise flats. Harry leaned over Sivertsen and pushed the door open on the passenger side. The car had been broken into a number of years ago and the passenger door wouldn’t open from the outside. Rakel joked about it, about cars and the personality of car owners. He was not sure that he had grasped the subtext. Harry walked round the car to the passenger door, pulled Sivertsen out and told him to stand with his back to him.

  ‘Are you a southpaw?’ Harry asked while unlocking the handcuffs.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you punch best with your left hand or your right?’

  ‘Oh, I see. I don’t punch.’

  ‘Terrific.’

  Harry attached the handcuffs to Sivertsen’s right wrist and to his own left. Sivertsen sent him a surprised look.

  ‘Don’t want to lose you, old chap.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier to point a gun at me?’

  ‘Course it would, but I had to be a good boy and hand it over a couple of weeks ago. Let’s go.’

  They cut across a field towards the dark, heavy profiles of high-rise flats towering up against the night sky.

  ‘Nice to be back in old familiar territory?’ Harry asked when they stood in front of the entrance to the student block.

  Sivertsen shrugged his shoulders.

  Once inside, Harry heard something he would have preferred not to hear. Footsteps on the stairs. He shot a quick glance around. He saw the light in the porthole-shaped window in the lift door and stepped sideways into the lift, dragging Sivertsen after him. The lift rocked under their weight.

  ‘Guess which floor we’re going to!’ Harry said.

  Sivertsen rolled his eyes as Harry dangled a bunch of keys with a plastic skull attached in front of his face.

  ‘Not in the mood for games? OK, take us to the fourth, Sivertsen.’

  Sivertsen pressed the button with the figure four on and looked up, waiting for the lift to move. Harry scrutinised Sivertsen’s face. He was a damned good actor; he had to give him that.

  ‘The grille,’ Harry said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The lift won’t move unless you close the grille. You know that.’

  ‘This?’

  Harry nodded. The metal rattled as Sivertsen pulled the grille door to the right. The lift still didn’t budge.

  Harry felt a bead of sweat forming on his brow.

  ‘Pull it right to the end,’ Harry said.

  ‘Like this?’

  ‘Cut out the play-acting,’ Harry said, swallowing. ‘It has to be pulled right over. If it doesn’t touch the contact on the floor by the door frame, the lift won’t work.’

  Sivertsen smiled.

  Harry clenched his right fist.

  The lift gave a jerk and the white brick wall began to move behind the black, glistening iron grille. They passed one lift door and through the porthole Harry saw the back of someone’s head, going downstairs. One of the students, he hoped. At any rate, Bjørn Holm had said that forensics had finished their work here.

  ‘You don’t like lifts, do you?’

  Harry didn’t answer; he just watched the wall gliding by.

  ‘A tiny little phobia?’

  The lift stopped suddenly and Harry had to take a step to the side not to lose balance. The floor rocked beneath them and the wall was visible through the porthole.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he whispered.

  ‘You’re soaked in sweat, Inspector Hole. I thought this would be a good moment to get one thing clear with you.’

  ‘This is not a good moment for anything. Move, or else . . .’

  Sivertsen had taken up a position in front of the lift buttons and didn’t seem to have any intention of moving. Harry raised his right hand. It was then that he saw it. The chisel in Sivertsen’s left hand. With the green handle.

  ‘I found it at the back of the seat,’ Sivertsen said with almost an apologetic smile. ‘You should tidy up your car. Are you listening to me now?’

  The steel flashed. Harry tried to think. Tried to keep panic at bay.

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Good, because what I’m going to say requires a little bit of concentration. I’m innocent. That is, I did smuggle arms and diamonds. I’ve been doing that for years. However, I have not taken anyone’s life.’

  Sivertsen raised the chisel when Harry moved his hand. Harry dropped it again.

  ‘The gun-running went through someone called Prince, who I’ve known for a little while now is the same person as Inspector Tom Waaler. And even more interesting, I can prove that it’s Tom Waaler. Also, if I’ve understood the situation correctly, you’re dependent on my testimony and my evidence to nail Tom Waaler. If you don’t nail him, he’ll nail you. Right?’

  Harry’s eyes were on the chisel.

  ‘Hole?’

  Harry nodded.

  Sivertsen’s laugh was high-pitched, like a girl’s.

  ‘Isn’t that a wonderful paradox, Hole? Here we are, an arms smuggler and a flatfoot, chained together and totally dependent on one another, and still we’re puzzling how to kill each other?’

  ‘True paradoxes don’t exist,’ Harry said. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want,’ said Sivertsen, raising the chisel in the air and holding it so that the handle pointed at Harry, ‘you to find the person who made it look as if I’d killed four people. If you can do that, then you can have Waaler’s head served on a silver platter. You scrub my back and I’ll scrub yours.’

  Harry gave Sivertsen an intense glare. Their handcuffs rubbed together.

  ‘OK,’ Harry said. ‘But let’s do things in the right order. First we put Waaler behind bars. That done, we can work undisturbed and I can help you.’

  Sivertsen shook his head.

  ‘I’m aware of the case against me. I’ve had an entire day to think about it, Hole. The only thing I have
to bargain with is my evidence against Waaler, and the only person I have to bargain with is you. The police have already received the bouquets for their triumph and so none of them is going to look into this case with fresh eyes and risk the success of the century being turned into the blunder of the century. The maniac who murdered these women wants me to take the rap. I’ve been set up. And I don’t have a chance in hell without help.’

  ‘Are you aware that Tom Waaler and his colleagues are busting a gut at this very moment to find us? For every hour that passes, they’ll be closer. And when – not if – they find us, we’re done for, both of us?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why take the risk? Given that what you say about the police is correct, that they won’t under any circumstances waste more time on this case, isn’t twenty years in prison still better than losing your life?’

  ‘Twenty years in prison is not a choice I have any more, Hole.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’ve just found out that something is about to change my life for ever.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘I’m going to be a father, Inspector Hole.’

  Harry blinked twice.

  ‘You have to find the real murderer before Waaler finds us, Hole. It’s as simple as that.’

  Sivertsen passed the chisel to Harry.

  ‘Do you believe me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Harry lied, stuffing the chisel into his jacket pocket.

  The steel cables screamed as the lift began to move again.

  35

  Sunday Night. Fascinating Nonsense.

  ‘Hope you like Iggy Pop,’ Harry said handcuffing Sven Sivertsen to the radiator under the window of room 406. ‘This is the only view we’re going to have for a while.’

  ‘Could be worse,’ Sven said looking up at the poster. ‘I saw Iggy and the Stooges in Berlin. I suppose before the owner of the poster was born.’

  Harry checked his watch: 1.10. Waaler and his people had probably already checked his flat in Sofies gate and were doing the rounds of the hotels. It was impossible to say how much time they had left. Harry sank down into the sofa and rubbed his face with both palms.