Nemesis - Harry Hole 02 Page 39

  She swept the shoulder holster off the table with her arm. It thudded against the wall.

  It was pitch black as Harry stood in Sofies gate searching a more familiar jacket pocket for his keys. One of the first things he had done that morning at Police HQ had been to collect his clothes from Krimteknisk, where they had been taken from Vigdis Albu's house. But the very first thing had been to make an appearance in Bjarne Moller's office. The Head of Crime Squad had said that as far as Harry was concerned almost everything looked fine, but they would have to wait to see if anyone reported a break-in at Harelabben 16. Over the course of the day consideration would be given to whether there would be any response to Harry's withholding of information regarding his presence in Anna Bethsen's flat on the night of the murder. Harry replied that, in the event of an investigation into the case, he would be obliged to mention the free rein the Chief Superintendent and Moller had given him in the search for the Expeditor, plus their sanctioning of a trip to Brazil without informing the Brazilian police.

  Bjarne Moller had grinned wryly and said he assumed they would conclude that no investigation was necessary, or indeed any response.

  The entrance hall was quiet. Harry tore down the police tape in front of the door of his flat. A piece of chipboard had been fitted over the broken pane.

  He stood surveying the sitting room. Weber explained that they had taken photographs of the flat before they started the search so that everything could be put back properly. Nevertheless, he couldn't escape the knowledge that alien hands and eyes had been there. It wasn't that there was so much to hide - some passionate but dated love letters, an open pack of condoms well past their sell-by date and an envelope containing photographs of Ellen Gjelten's dead body. Having them at home might possibly be considered as perverted. Apart from that: one pornographic magazine, one Bonnie Tyler record and a book by Linn Ullmann.

  Harry regarded the flashing red light on the answer machine for a long time before pressing. The familiar voice of a boy filled the estranged room. 'Hi, this is us. They decided today. Mummy is crying, so she told me to say . . .'

  Harry steeled himself and breathed in.

  'We're leaving tomorrow.'

  Harry held his breath. Had he heard correctly? We're leaving? 'We won. You should have seen their faces. Mummy said everyone thought we would lose. Mummy, do you want . . . no, she's just crying. Now we're going to McDonald's to celebrate. Mummy says, will you pick us up? Bye.'

  He heard Oleg breathing into the phone and someone blowing their nose and laughing in the background. Then Oleg's voice again, quieter: 'Great if you would, Harry.'

  Harry slumped into the chair. A lump grew in his throat and the tears flowed.

  PART VI

  41

  S2MN

  There wasn't a cloud in the sky, but the wind was bitingly cold and the pale sun didn't give much warmth. Harry and Aune had turned up the collars of their jackets and walked next to each other down the avenue of birch trees, which had already divested themselves of their leaves for winter.

  'I told my wife how happy you sounded when you told me Rakel and Oleg were coming back home,' Aune said. 'She asked if that meant you three would soon live together.'

  Harry answered with a smile.

  'At least she has enough room in that house of hers,' Aune prodded.

  'There's enough room in the house,' Harry said. 'Say hi to Karoline and quote Ola Bauer.' ' "I moved to Carefree Street"?' ' "But that didn't help much, either." ' They both laughed.

  'Anyway, my mind is pretty much on the case at the moment,' Harry said.

  'The case, yes,' Aune said. 'I've read all the reports, as you asked.

  Bizarre. Truly bizarre. You wake up in your flat, can't remember a thing and bang, you're caught up in this game of Alf Gunnerud's. Naturally, it is a bit tricky to establish a psychological diagnosis post-mortem, but he is truly an interesting case. Doubtless a very intelligent, creative soul. Almost artistic, even. It's a masterly plan he hatched. There are a couple of things I wondered about. I read the copies of the e-mails he sent you. He referred to the fact that you had had a blackout. That must mean he saw you leave the flat in an inebriated state and speculated that you wouldn't remember any-thing the following day?'

  'That's how it is when a man has to be helped into a taxi. I would guess he was standing in the street outside, spying on me, just as he wrote in his e-mail Arne Albu was doing. Presumably he had been in touch with Anna and knew I would be coming that evening. My leaving the house so drunk must have been an unexpected bonus.'

  'So then he unlocked the flat with a key he got from the manufacturer via Lasesmeden AS. And shot her. Using his own gun?'

  'Probably. The serial number had been filed off. As was the number on the gun we found in Gunnerud's hand in the container terminal. Weber says the filing patterns suggest they come from the same supplier. Looks like someone is running an illegal arms-import business on a grand scale. The Glock we found at Sverre Olsen's -Ellen's killer - had exactly the same file marks.'

  'So he puts the gun in her right hand. Even though she was left-handed.'

  'Bait,' Harry said. 'Naturally enough, he knew I would get involved in the case at some point, if for no other reason than to make sure my position wouldn't be compromised. And he knew that, unlike the other officers, I would realise it was the wrong hand.'

  'And then there was the photograph of fru Albu and the children.'

  'To lead me to Arne Albu, her last lover.'

  'And before he leaves, he takes Anna's laptop and the mobile telephone you dropped in the flat during the evening.' 'Another unexpected bonus.'

  'So this brain concocted an intricate, watertight plan for how he was going to punish his faithless lover, the man with whom she deceived him while he was in prison and her resurrected mission, the blond-haired policeman. In addition, he begins to improvise. Once again he uses his job at Lasesmeden AS to gain access to your flat and cellar. He plants Anna's laptop there, connected to your mobile phone, and sets up an e-mail account via an untraceable server.'

  'Almost untraceable.'

  'Ah, yes, this anonymous computer nerd of yours found that out. But what he didn't find out was that the e-mails you received had been written in advance and were sent on pre-determined dates from the computer in your storeroom. In other words, the sender had set everything up well before the laptop was put in position. Correct?'

  'Mm. Did you read the e-mails?'

  'Indeed.' Aune nodded. 'In retrospect, you can see that while they factored in a certain unfolding of events, they were also vague. But it wouldn't seem like that to the person caught up in events; the sender would appear permanently well-informed and online. But he could do that because in many ways he was running the whole show.'

  'Well, we don't know yet if it was Gunnerud who orchestrated the murder of Arne Albu. A colleague at the locksmith's says he and Gunnerud were at Gamle Major drinking beer at the time of the murder.'

  Aune rubbed his hands. Harry wasn't sure if it was because of the cold wind or because he was enjoying the thought of so many logically possible or impossible outcomes. 'Let's assume Gunnerud didn't kill Albu,' the psychologist said. 'What fate had he planned for him by pointing you in his direction? That Albu would be convicted? But then you would go free. And vice versa. Two men can't be convicted of the same murder.'

  'Right,' Harry said. 'You have to ask yourself what the most important thing in Albu's life was?'

  'Excellent,' Aune said. 'A father of three who voluntarily, or not, scales down his professional ambitions. The family, I assume.'

  'And what had Gunnerud achieved by revealing, or rather allowing me to find out, that Arne Albu was continuing to meet Anna?' 'His wife took the children and left him.'

  ' "Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living." '

  'Good quote.' Aune gave him a nod of acknowledgement. 'Who said that?'

  'Forgotten,
' Harry said.

  'But the next question you have to ask is what he wanted to take from you, Harry? What makes your life worth living?'

  They had arrived at the house where Anna had lived. Harry fidgeted with the keys for a long time.

  'Well?' Aune said.

  'All Gunnerud probably knew about me was what Anna had told him. And she knew me from the time when I didn't have . . . much more than the job.'

  'The job?'

  'He wanted me behind bars. But, primarily, kicked out of the force.'

  They talked as they went up the stairs.

  Inside the flat Weber and his boys had finished the forensic examination. Weber was happy and said they had found Gunnerud's prints in several places, including the bedhead.

  'He wasn't exactly careful,' Weber said.

  'He was here so many times you would have found prints even if he had been,' Harry said. 'Besides, he was convinced he would never come under suspicion.'

  'Incidentally, the way Albu was killed was interesting,' Aune said as Harry opened the sliding door to the room with the portraits and the Grimmer lamp. 'Buried upside down. On a beach. It looked like a rite, as if the murderer was trying to tell us something about himself. Have you given it any thought?'

  'Not my case.'

  'That wasn't what I asked.'

  'OK. Maybe the murderer wanted to say something about the victim.'

  'What do you mean?'

  Harry switched on the Grimmer lamp and light fell on the three pictures. 'It reminds me of something in my law studies, the Gulathing Law of 1100. It states that everyone who dies should be buried in holy ground except for men of dishonour, traitors and murderers. They should be buried where the sea meets land. The place where Albu was buried doesn't suggest a jealousy killing, as it would have been if Gunnerud had killed him. Someone wanted to show that Albu was a criminal.'

  'Interesting,' said Aune. 'Why should we look at these pictures again? They're terrible.'

  'You're really sure you can't see anything in them?'

  'I certainly can. I can see a pretentious young artist with an exaggerated sense of drama and no sense of art.'

  'I have a colleague called Beate Lonn. She couldn't be here today because she's giving a talk at a police conference in Germany, about how it is possible to recognise masked criminals with the help of computer manipulation of images and the fusiform gyrus. She has a special innate talent: she can recognise all the faces she has seen in the whole of her life.'

  Aune nodded. 'I am aware of this phenomenon.'

  'When I showed her these pictures she recognised the people.'

  'Oh?' Aune raised an eyebrow. 'Tell me more.'

  Harry pointed. 'The one on the left is Arne Albu, the one in the middle is me and the last is Alf Gunnerud.'

  Aune squinted, straightened his glasses and tried looking at the pictures from a variety of distances. 'Interesting,' he mumbled. 'Extremely interesting. I can only see the shapes of heads.'

  'I only wanted to know if you, as an expert witness, can vouchsafe that this kind of recognition is possible. It would help us to make further links between Gunnerud and Anna.'

  Aune waved his hand. 'If what you say about froken Lonn is true, she could have recognised a face with minimal information.'

  Outside again, Aune said that he would be keen to meet this Beate Lonn professionally. 'She is a detective, I take it?'

  'In the Robberies Unit. I worked with her on the Expeditor case.'

  'Oh, yes. How's it going?'

  'Well, there are not many leads. They had been expecting him to strike again soon, but nothing has happened. Odd, actually.'

  In Bogstadveien, Harry noticed the first snowflakes swirling in the wind.

  'Winter!' Ali shouted across the street to Harry, pointing up at the sky. He said something in Urdu to his brother, who immediately took over the job of carrying the fruit crates back inside the shop. Then Ali padded across the road to Harry. 'Isn't it wonderful it's over?' He smiled.

  'Yes, it is,' Harry said.

  'Autumn's bloody awful. Finally, a bit of snow.'

  'Oh, yes. I thought you meant the case.'

  'Of the laptop in your storeroom? Is it over?'

  'Hasn't anyone told you? They've found the man who put it there.'

  'Aha. That must be why my wife was told I didn't need to go to the police station for questioning today after all. What was it about, anyway?'

  'To cut a long story short, a guy was trying to make out I was involved in a serious crime. Invite me to a meal one day and I'll give you all the details.'

  'I've already invited you, Harry!'

  'You didn't say when.'

  Ali rolled his eyes. 'Why do you have to have a date and a time before you dare to drop by? Knock on the door and I'll open up. We've always got food.'

  'Thanks, Ali. I'll knock loud and clear.' Harry opened the door.

  'Did you find out who the lady was? Was she an assistant?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'The mysterious lady I saw in front of the cellar door that day. I told Tom somebody-or-other about it.'

  Harry stood with his hand on the door handle. 'Exactly what did you say to him, Ali?'

  'He asked if I had seen anything unusual in or around the cellar and then I remembered I'd seen the back of a lady I didn't recognise by the cellar door as I came in the building. I remembered because I was going to ask who she was, but then I heard the lock click so I assumed if she had a key, she had to be OK.'

  'When was this and what did she look like?'

  Ali opened his palms in apology. 'I was busy and only glimpsed her back. Three weeks ago? Five weeks? Blonde hair? Dark hair? No idea.'

  'But you're sure it was a woman?'

  'I must have thought it was a woman, anyway.'

  'Alf Gunnerud was medium height, narrow-shouldered with dark, shoulder-length hair. Is that what made you think it was a woman?'

  Ali pondered. 'Yes, it might have been. And it could also have been fru Melkersen's daughter visiting. For instance.'

  'Bye, Ali.'

  Harry decided to take a quick shower before changing and going to see Rakel and Oleg, who had invited him to pancakes and Tetris. On their return from Moscow, Rakel had brought back an attractive chess set with carved pieces and a board made of wood and mother-of-pearl. Unfortunately, Rakel hadn't liked the Namco G-Con 45 gun Harry had bought for Oleg and had immediately confiscated it. She had explained that she had told Oleg many times that he was not to play with firearms until he was twelve, at least. Harry and Oleg had both rather shamefacedly accepted this without any discussion. But they knew Rakel would take advantage of the opportunity to go jogging while Harry looked after Oleg. And Oleg had whispered to Harry that he knew where she had hidden the Namco G-Con 45 gun.

  The burning-hot jets of water drove the cold out of his body as he tried to forget what Ali had said. There would always be room for doubts in any case, however cut and dried it seemed. And Harry was a born doubter. At some point, though, you had to have some faith, if life was to have any shape or make sense.

  He dried himself down, shaved and put on a clean shirt. Checked himself over in the mirror and grinned. Oleg had said he had yellow teeth, and Rakel had laughed a bit too loudly. In the mirror he saw the printout of the first e-mail from S2MN pinned to the opposite wall. Tomorrow he would take it down and put up the photograph of Sis and himself. Tomorrow. He studied the e-mail in the mirror. Strange he hadn't realised the evening he had been standing in front of the mirror and felt something was missing. Harry and his little sister. Must have been because when you see something so often you tend to develop a blindness to it. Blind to it. He scrutinised the e-mail in the mirror. Then he ordered a taxi, put on his shoes and waited. Looked at his watch. The taxi must have arrived by now. Should get going. He realised he had picked up the receiver again and was dialling a number.

  'Aune.'

  'I want you to read the e-mails one more time and tell me if you
think they were written by a man or a woman.'

  42

  Kebab

  The snow melted overnight. Astrid Monsen had just come out of the apartment building and was making her way across the wet, black tarmac towards Bogstadveien when she saw the blond policeman on the opposite pavement. Her pulse, like her walking speed, leapt. She stared rigidly ahead, hoping he wouldn't see her. There had been photographs of Alf Gunnerud in the papers and for days detectives had been trudging up and down the stairs disrupting her quiet working routine. But now it was over, she had told herself.