Harry Hole Mysteries 3-Book Bundle (180 page)

Ulla was speaking a bit too fast about people from their childhood in Manglerud. Did Truls know what they were doing now?

Truls didn’t.

‘Don’t have much contact with them any more,’ he answered. Even though he was fairly sure she knew he had never had any contact with them. Not one of them, not Goggen, Jimmy, Anders or Krøkke. Truls had one friend: Mikael. And he too had made sure to keep Truls at arm’s length as he had risen through the ranks socially and professionally.

They had run out of things to say. She had run out. He hadn’t had anything to say from the start. A pause.

‘Women, Truls? Anything new there?’

‘Nothing new there, nope.’ He tried to say it in the same jokey tone as she had. He really could have done with the welcome drink now.

‘Is there really no one who can capture your heart?’

She had tilted her head and winked one smiling eye, but he could see she was already regretting her question. Perhaps because she could see his flushed face. Or perhaps because she knew the answer. That you, you, you, Ulla, could capture my heart. He had walked three steps behind the super-couple Mikael and Ulla in Manglerud, been ever-present, ever at their service, though this was gainsaid by the sullen, indifferent I’m-bored-but-I-have-nothing-better-on-offer look. While his heart had burned for her, while from the corner of his eye he had registered her every movement or expression. He could not have her, it was an impossibility, he knew. Yet he had yearned the way people yearn to fly.

Then at last Mikael strode down the stairs, pulling down his shirtsleeves so that the cufflinks could be seen under the dinner jacket.

‘Truls!’

It sounded like the somewhat exaggerated heartiness usually reserved for people you don’t really know. ‘Why the long face, old friend? We have a palace to celebrate!’

‘I thought it was the Chief of Police job we were celebrating,’ Truls said, looking round. ‘I saw it on the news today.’

‘A leak. It’s not been formally announced yet. But it’s your terrace we’re going to pay tribute to today, Truls, isn’t it? How’s it going with the champagne, dear?’

‘I’ll pour it now,’ Ulla said, brushing an invisible speck of dust off her husband’s shoulder and departing.

‘Do you know Isabelle Skøyen?’ Truls asked.

‘Yes,’ Mikael said, still smiling. ‘She’s coming this evening. Why?’

‘Nothing.’ Truls inhaled. It had to be now, or not at all. ‘There’s something I’ve been wondering about.’

‘Yes?’

‘A few days ago I was sent on a job to arrest a guy at Leon, the hotel, you know?’

‘I think I know it, yes.’

‘But while I was in the middle of the arrest two other policemen I don’t know turned up, and they wanted to arrest us both.’

‘Double booking?’ Mikael laughed. ‘Talk to Finn. He coordinates operational matters.’

Truls slowly shook his head. ‘I don’t think it was a double booking.’

‘No?’

‘I think someone sent me there on purpose.’

‘You mean it was a wind-up?’

‘It was a wind-up, yes,’ Truls said, searching Mikael’s eyes, but found no indication that he understood what Truls was
actually
talking about. Could he have been mistaken after all? Truls swallowed.

‘So I was wondering if you knew anything about it, if you might have been in on it.’

‘Me?’ Mikael leaned back and burst out laughing. And when Truls saw into his mouth he remembered how Mikael had always returned from the school dentist with zero cavities. Not even Karius and Bactus got the better of him.

‘I wish I had been! Tell me, did they lay you out on the floor and cuff you?’

Truls eyed Mikael. Saw he had been wrong. So he laughed along with him. From relief as much as at the image of himself being sat on by two other officers, and because Mikael’s infectious laughter always invited him to laugh along. No,
commanded
him to laugh along. But it had also enveloped him, warmed him, made him part of something, a member of something, a duo consisting of him and Mikael Bellman. Friends. He heard his own grunted laughter as Mikael’s faded.

‘Did you really think I was in on it, Truls?’ Mikael asked with a pensive expression.

Truls, smiling, looked at him. Thought about how Dubai had found his way to him, thought of the boy Truls had beaten to blindness in remand. Who could have told Dubai that? Thought of the blood the SOC group had found under Gusto’s nail in Hausmanns gate, the blood Truls had contaminated before it got as far as a DNA test. But some of which he had procured and kept. It was evidence such as this that could be valuable one rainy day. And since it had definitely begun to rain, he had driven to the Pathology Unit this morning with the blood. And been given the result before coming here this evening. The test suggested, so far, that it was the same blood and nail fragments as those received from Beate Lønn a few days ago. Didn’t they talk to each other down there? Didn’t they think they had enough to do at Forensics? Truls had apologised and rung off. And considered the answer. The blood under Gusto Hanssen’s nails came from Mikael Bellman.

Mikael and Gusto.

Mikael and Rudolf Asayev.

Truls fingered the knot of his tie. It hadn’t been his father who taught him how to do it; he couldn’t even tie his own. It had been Mikael who had taught him when they were going to the end-of-school party. He had shown Truls how to tie a simple Windsor knot, and when Truls had asked why Mikael’s knot seemed so much fatter Mikael had answered that it was because it was a double Windsor, but it was unlikely to suit Truls.

Mikael’s gaze rested on him. He was still waiting for an answer to his question. Why Truls thought Mikael had been in on the stunt.

Been in on the decision to murder him and Harry Hole at Hotel Leon.

The doorbell rang, but Mikael didn’t move.

Truls pretended to be scratching his forehead while using his fingertips to dry the sweat.

‘No,’ he said and heard his own grunted laugh. ‘An idea, that’s all. Forget it.’

The stairs creaked under Stein Hanssen’s weight. He could feel every step and predict every creak and groan. He stopped at the top. Knocked on the door.

‘Come in,’ he heard from inside.

Stein Hanssen entered.

The first thing he saw was the suitcase.

‘Packed and ready?’ he asked.

A nod.

‘Did you find the passport?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve ordered a taxi to take you to the airport.’

‘I’m coming.’

‘OK.’ Stein looked around. The way he had in the other rooms. Said his farewells. Told them he wouldn’t be coming back. And listened to the echoes of their childhood. Father’s encouraging voice. Mother’s secure voice. Gusto’s enthusiastic voice. Irene’s happy voice. The only one he didn’t hear was his own. He had been silent.

‘Stein?’ Irene was holding a photograph in her hand. Stein knew which one, she had pinned it over her bed the same evening Simonsen, the solicitor, had brought her here. The photograph showing her with Gusto and Oleg.

‘Yes?’

‘Did you ever feel a desire to kill Gusto?’

Stein didn’t answer. Just thought of that evening.

The phone call from Gusto saying he knew where Irene was. Running to Hausmanns gate. And arriving: the police cars. The voices around him
saying the boy inside was dead, shot. And the feeling of excitement. Yes, almost happiness. And after that, the shock. The grief. Yes, in a way he had grieved over Gusto. At the same time as nursing a hope that Irene would at last be clean. That hope had of course been extinguished as the days passed and he realised that Gusto’s death meant he had missed out on the chance to find her.

She was pale. Withdrawal symptoms. It was going to be tough. But they would manage. They would manage between them.

‘Shall we …?’

‘Yes,’ she said, opening the bedside-table drawer. Looking at the photograph. Pressing her lips against it and putting it in the drawer, face down.

Harry heard the door open.

He was sitting motionless in the darkness. Listened to the footsteps cross the sitting-room floor. Saw the movements by the mattresses. Glimpsed the wire as it caught the street lamp outside. The steps went into the kitchen. And the light came on. Harry heard the stove being moved.

He rose and followed.

Harry stood in the doorway watching him on his knees in front of the rathole, opening the bag with trembling hands. Placing objects beside each other. The syringe, the rubber tubing, the spoon, the lighter, the gun. The packages of violin.

The threshold creaked as Harry shifted weight, but the boy didn’t notice, just carried on with his feverish activity.

Harry knew it was the craving. The brain was focused on one thing. He coughed.

The boy stiffened. The shoulders hunched, but he didn’t turn. Sat without moving, his head bowed, staring down at the stash. Didn’t turn.

‘I thought so,’ Harry said. ‘That this is where you would come first. You reckoned the coast was clear now.’

The boy still hadn’t moved.

‘Hans Christian told you we found her for you, didn’t he? Yet you had to come here first.’

The boy got up. And again it struck Harry. How tall he’d become. A man, almost.

‘What do you want, Harry?’

‘I’ve come to arrest you, Oleg.’

Oleg frowned. ‘For possession of a couple of bags of violin?’

‘Not for dope, Oleg. For the murder of Gusto.’

‘Don’t!’ he repeated.

But I had the needle deep into a vein, which was trembling with expectation.

‘I thought it would be Stein or Ibsen,’ I said. ‘Not you.’

I didn’t see his fricking foot coming. It hit the needle, which sailed through the air and landed at the back of the kitchen, by the sink full of dishes.

‘Fuck’s sake, Oleg,’ I said, looking up at him.

Oleg stared at Harry for a long time.

It was a serious, calm stare, without any real surprise. More like it was testing the lie of the land, trying to find its bearings.

And when he did speak, Oleg sounded more curious than angry or confused.

‘But you believed me, Harry. When I told you it was someone else, someone with a balaclava, you believed me.’

‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘I did believe you. Because I so
wanted
to believe you.’

‘But, Harry,’ Oleg said softly, gazing down at the bag of powder he had opened, ‘if you can’t believe your best friend what can you believe?’

‘Evidence,’ Harry said, feeling his throat thicken.

‘What evidence? We found explanations for the evidence, Harry. You and I, we crushed the evidence between us.’

‘The other evidence. The new stuff.’

‘Which new stuff?’

Harry pointed to the floor by Oleg. ‘The gun there is an Odessa. It uses the same calibre as Gusto was shot with, Makarov, nine by eighteen millimetres. Whatever happens, the ballistics report will state with one hundred per cent certainty that this gun is the murder weapon, Oleg. And
it has your dabs on it. Only yours. If anyone else used it and wiped their prints afterwards, yours would have been removed as well.’

Oleg touched the gun, as if to confirm it was the one they were talking about.

‘And then there’s the syringe,’ Harry said. ‘There are lots of fingerprints on it, perhaps from two people. But it is definitely your thumbprint on the plunger. The plunger you have to press when you’re shooting up. And on that print there are particles of gunpowder, Oleg.’

Oleg ran a finger along the syringe. ‘Why is there new evidence against me?’

‘Because you said in your statement you were high when you came into the room. But the gunpowder particles prove you injected the needle
after
because you had the particles on you. It proves you shot Gusto first and injected yourself afterwards. You were not high at the moment of the act, Oleg. This was premeditated murder.’

Oleg nodded slowly. ‘And you’ve checked my fingerprints on the gun and the syringe against the police register. So they already know that I—’

‘I haven’t contacted the police. I’m the only person who knows about this.’

Oleg swallowed. Harry saw the tiny movements in his throat. ‘How do you know they’re my prints if you didn’t check with the police?’

‘I had other prints I could compare them with.’

Harry took his hand from his coat pocket. Placed the Game Boy on the kitchen table.

Oleg stared at the Game Boy. Blinked and blinked as though he had something in his eye.

‘What made you suspect me?’ he whispered.

‘The hatred,’ Harry said. ‘The old man, Rudolf Asayev, said I should follow the hatred.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘He’s the man you called Dubai. It took me a while to realise he was referring to his own hatred. Hatred for you. Hatred for the fact that you killed his son.’

‘Son?’ Oleg raised his head and looked blankly at Harry.

‘Yes. Gusto was his son.’

Oleg dropped his gaze, squatted and stared at the floor. ‘If …’ He shook his head. Started afresh. ‘If it’s true Dubai was Gusto’s father and if he hated me so much why didn’t he make sure I was killed in prison straight away?’

‘Because you were exactly where he wanted you. Because for him prison was worse than death. Prison eats your soul, death only liberates it. Prison was what he wished for those he hated most. You, Oleg. And he had total control over what you did there. It was only when you began to talk to me that you represented a danger, and he had to be content with killing you. But he didn’t manage that.’

Oleg closed his eyes. Sat like that, still on his haunches. As though he had an important race in front of him, and now they just had to be quiet and concentrate.

The town was playing its music outside: the cars, a distant foghorn, a half-hearted siren, noise as the sum of human activity, like the anthill’s perpetual, relentless rustle, monotonous, soporific, secure like a warm duvet.

Oleg slowly leaned over without taking his eyes off Harry.

Harry shook his head.

But Oleg grabbed the gun. Carefully, as though afraid it would explode in his hands.

TRULS HAD FLED TO BE
alone on the terrace.

He had stood on the periphery of a couple of conversations, sipping champagne, eating from toothpicks and trying to look as if he belonged there. A few of these well-brought-up individuals had attempted to include him. Said hello, asked him who he was and what he did. Truls had given brief replies, and it had not occurred to him to return the favour. As though he wasn’t in a position to do that. Or was frightened he ought to know who they were and what kind of bloody important jobs they had.