Harry Hole Mysteries 3-Book Bundle (80 page)

‘Are there any here? Wolves?’

‘He never tells me exactly what kind of animal he means. By the way, there’s a rumour going round that at night the boy’s ghost walks the plains. And that if you see him, you have to be careful, because it means there’s a sheer drop or an avalanche nearby.’

Kaja finished her drink.

‘I can have drinking hours extended for a bit if you like.’

‘Thanks, Aslak, but I have to be up early tomorrow.’

‘Ooh,’ he said, laughing with his eyes and scratching his locks, ‘now that sounds like I …’ He paused.

‘What?’ Kaja said.

‘Nothing. I suppose you have a husband or boyfriend down south.’

Kaja smiled, though didn’t answer.

Aslak stared at the table, and said quietly, ‘Well, there you go: provincial policeman couldn’t take his drink and started wittering.’

‘That’s alright,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got a boyfriend. And I like you. You remind me of my brother.’

‘But?’

‘But what?’

‘Don’t forget I’m a real detective, too. I can see you’re no hermit. There is someone, isn’t there?’

Kaja laughed. Normally she would have left it at that. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was because she liked Aslak Krongli. Maybe it was because she didn’t have anyone to talk to about that sort of thing, not since Even died, and Aslak was a stranger, a long way from Oslo, someone who didn’t talk to her circle of acquaintances.

‘I’m in love,’ she heard herself say. ‘With a police officer.’ She put the glass of water to her mouth to hide a flurry of confusion. The strange thing was that it hadn’t struck her as true until she heard the words said aloud.

Aslak raised his glass to hers.
‘Skål
to the lucky guy. And the lucky girl, I hope.’

Kaja shook her head. ‘There’s nothing to
skål
about. Not yet. Maybe ever. My God, listen to me …’

‘We don’t have anything else to do, do we? Tell me more.’

‘It’s complicated.
He’s
complicated. And I don’t know if he wants me. In fact, that bit is fairly straightforward.’

‘Let me guess. He’s got someone, and he can’t let go.’

Kaja sighed. ‘Perhaps. I honestly don’t know. Aslak, thank you for all your help, but I—’

‘—have to go to bed now.’ The police officer rose. ‘I hope it all goes sour with your friend, you want to escape from your broken heart and the city and that you could envisage giving this a chance.’ He passed her an A4 piece of paper with a Hol Police Station letterhead.

Kaja read it and laughed out loud. ‘A post in the sticks?’

‘Roy Stille is retiring in the autumn and good officers are hard to find,’ Aslak said. ‘It’s our advertisement for the post. We put it out last week. Our office is in Geilo city centre. Time off every alternate weekend and free dentistry.’

As Kaja went to bed she could hear the distant rumbles. Thunder and snow rarely came as a joint package.

She rang Harry and got his voicemail. Left a little ghost story about the local guide Odd Utmo with the rotten teeth and brace, and about his son who had to be even uglier since he had been haunting the district for eighteen years. She laughed. Realised she was drunk. Said goodnight.

She dreamed about avalanches.

It was eleven o’clock in the morning. Harry and Joe had left Goma at seven, crossed the border to Rwanda without any problems and Harry was standing in an office on the first floor of the terminal building at Kigali Airport. Two uniformed officers were giving him the once-over. Not in an unfriendly way, but to check that he really was who he claimed to be: a Norwegian policeman. Harry put his ID card back in his jacket pocket and felt the smooth paper of the coffee-brown
envelope he had there. The problem was that there were two of them. How do you bribe two public servants at once? Ask them to share the contents of the envelope and politely request them not to snitch on one another?

One officer, the same one who had inspected Harry’s passport two days before, pulled his beret back on his head. ‘So you want a copy of whose landing card? Could you repeat the date and the name?’

‘Adele Vetlesen. We know she arrived at this airport on the
25
th of November. And I’ll pay a finder’s fee.’

The two officers exchanged glances, and one left the room on the other’s cue. The remaining officer walked over to the window and surveyed the runway, the little DH
8
that had landed and which in fifty-five minutes would be transporting Harry on the first phase of his journey home.

‘Finder’s fee,’ the officer repeated quietly. ‘I assume you know it is illegal to try to bribe a public servant, Mr Hole. But you probably thought: Shiit, this is Africa.’

It struck Harry that the man’s skin was so black it seemed like gloss paint.

He felt his shirt sticking to his back. The same shirt. Perhaps they sold shirts at Nairobi airport. If he got that far.

‘That’s right,’ Harry said.

The officer laughed and turned. ‘Tough guy, eh! Are you a hard man, Hole? I saw you were a policeman when you arrived.’

‘Oh?’

‘You examined me with the same circumspection that I examined you.’

Harry shrugged.

The door opened. The other officer was back accompanied by a woman dressed like a secretary with clickety-clack heels and glasses on the tip of her nose.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said in impeccable English, clocking Harry. ‘I’ve checked the date. There was no Adele Vetlesen on that flight.’

‘Mm. Could there be a mistake?’

‘Unlikely. Landing cards are filed by date. The flight you’re talking
about is a thirty-seven-seater DH
8
from Entebbe. It didn’t take long to check.’

‘Mm. If that’s the case, may I ask you to check something else for me?’

‘You may ask of course. What is it?’

‘Could you see if any other foreign women arrived on that flight?’

‘And why should I do that?’

‘Because Adele Vetlesen was booked onto that flight. So either she used a false passport here—’

‘I doubt that very much,’ the passport officer said. ‘We check all the passport photos very carefully before they are scanned by a machine that matches the passport number against the international ICAO register.’

‘—or someone else was travelling in Adele Vetlesen’s name and then used their own, genuine passport to pass through here. Which is more than possible, as passport numbers are not checked before passengers board the aircraft.’

‘True,’ the chief passport official said, pulling at his beret. ‘Airline staff only make sure the name and photo match more or less. For that purpose you can have a false passport made for fifty dollars anywhere in the world. It’s only when you get off the plane at your final destination and have to go through checks that your passport number is matched and false passports are revealed. But the question is the same: why should we help you, Mr Hole? Are you on an official mission here and have you got the papers to support that?’

‘My official mission was in the Congo,’ Harry lied. ‘But I found nothing there. Adele Vetlesen is missing, and we fear she may have been murdered by a serial killer who has already murdered at least three other women, among them a government MP. Her name is Marit Olsen – you can verify that on the Net. I’m conscious that the procedure now is for me to return home and go through formal channels, as a result of which we will lose several days and give the killer a further head start. And time to kill again.’

Harry saw that his words had made some impression on them. The woman and the chief official conferred, and the woman marched off again.

They waited in silence.

Harry looked at his watch. He hadn’t checked in on the flight yet.

Six minutes had passed when they heard the click-clack heels coming closer.

‘Eva Rosenberg, Juliana Verni, Veronica Raul Gueno and Claire Hobbes.’ She spat out the names, straightened her glasses and put four landing cards on the table in front of Harry before the door slammed behind her. ‘Not many European women come here,’ she said.

Harry’s eyes ran down the cards. All of them had given Kigali hotels as their address, but not the Gorilla Hotel. He looked at their home addresses. Eva Rosenberg had given an address in Stockholm.

‘Thank you,’ Harry said, noting down the names, addresses and passport numbers on the back of a taxi receipt he found in his jacket pocket.

‘I regret that we can’t be of any more assistance,’ the woman said, pushing her glasses up again.

‘Not at all,’ Harry said. ‘You’ve been a great help. Really.’

‘And now, Mr Policeman,’ said the tall, thin officer, with a smile that lit up his black-as-night face.

‘Yes?’ Harry said in anticipation, ready to take out the coffee-brown envelope.

‘Now it’s time we got you checked in on the flight to Nairobi.’

‘Mm,’ Harry said, looking at his watch. ‘I may have to catch the next one.’

‘Next one?’

‘I have to go back to the Gorilla Hotel.’

Kaja was sitting in the Norwegian railway’s so-called ‘comfort coach’ which – apart from free newspapers, two cups of free coffee and a socket for your laptop – meant that you sat like sardines in a can instead of in the almost empty economy areas. So when her phone rang and she saw it was Harry, that was where she hurried.

‘Where are you?’ Harry asked.

‘On the train. Passing Kongsberg right this minute. And you?’

‘Gorilla Hotel in Kigali. I’ve had a look at Adele Vetlesen’s hotel registration card. I won’t get away now before the afternoon flight, but I’ll
be home early tomorrow. Could you ring your friend, pumpkin head, at Drammen police station, and see if we can borrow the postcard Adele wrote? You can ask him to come to the station with it. The train stops at Drammen, doesn’t it?’

‘You’re pushing your luck. I’ll try anyway. What are we going to do with it?’

‘Compare the handwriting. There’s a handwriting expert called Jean Hue who worked at Kripos before he retired. Get him to the office for seven tomorrow.’

‘So early? D’you think he’ll—’

‘You’re right. I’ll scan Adele’s registration card and email it to you so you can go to Jean’s place with both this evening.’

‘This evening?’

‘He’ll be happy to see you. If you had any other plans, they are hereby cancelled.’

‘Great. By the way, sorry about the late call last night.’

‘No worries. Entertaining story.’

‘I was a bit tipsy.’

‘Thought so.’

Harry rang off.

‘Thanks for all your help,’ he said.

The receptionist responded with a smile.

The coffee-brown envelope had finally found a new owner.

Kjersti Rødsmoen went into the common room and over to the woman looking out of the window at the rain falling on Sandviken’s timber houses. In front of her was an untouched slice of cake with a little candle on.

‘This phone was found in your room, Katrine,’ she said softly. ‘The ward sister brought it to me. You know they’re forbidden, don’t you?’

Katrine nodded.

‘Anyway,’ Rødsmoen said, passing it over, ‘it’s ringing.’

Katrine Bratt took the vibrating mobile phone and pressed answer.

‘It’s me,’ said the voice at the other end. ‘I’ve got four women’s names
here. I’d like to know which of them was not booked on flight RA
101
to Kigali on the
25
th of November. And to receive confirmation that this person was not in any booking system for a Rwandan hotel that same night.’

‘I’m fine, thanks, Auntie.’

Silence for a second.

‘I see. Ring when you can.’

Katrine passed the phone back to Rødsmoen. ‘My auntie wishing me many happy returns.’

Kjersti Rødsmoen shook her head. ‘Rules say the use of phones is forbidden. So there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a phone, so long as you don’t use it. Just make sure the ward sister doesn’t see it, OK?’

Katrine nodded, and Rødsmoen left.

Katrine sat looking out of the window for a while, then got up and went towards the Hobbies Room. The ward sister’s voice reached her as she was about to cross the threshold.

‘What are you going to do, Katrine?’

Katrine answered without turning. ‘Play solitaire.’

G
UNNAR
H
AGEN TOOK THE LIFT DOWN TO THE BASEMENT.

Down. Downer. Downtrodden. Downsized.

He got out and set off through the culvert.

But Bellman had kept his promise, he hadn’t blabbed. And he had thrown him a line, a top-management post in the new, expanded Kripos. Harry’s report had been short and to the point. No results. Any idiot would have realised it was time to start swimming towards the lifebuoy.

Hagen opened the door at the end of the culvert without knocking.

Kaja Solness smiled sweetly while Harry Hole – sitting in front of the computer screen with a telephone to his ear – didn’t even turn round, just sang out ‘siddown-boss-want-some-crap-coffee?’ as though the unit head’s doppelgänger had announced his forthcoming arrival.

Hagen stood in the doorway. ‘I received the message that you were unable to find Adele Vetlesen. Time to pack up. Time was up ages ago, and you’re needed for other cases. At least you are, Kaja Solness.’

‘Dankeschön,
Günther,’ Harry said on the telephone, put it down and swivelled round.

‘Dankeschön?’
Hagen repeated.

‘Leipzig Police,’ Harry said. ‘By the way, Katrine Bratt sends her regards, boss. Remember her?’

Hagen eyed his inspector with suspicion. ‘I thought Bratt was in a mental institution.’

‘No doubt about that,’ Harry said, getting up and making for the coffee
machine. ‘But the woman’s a genius at searching the Net. Speaking of searches, boss …’

‘Searches?’

‘Could you see your way to giving us unlimited funds to mount a search?’

Hagen’s eyes almost popped out. Then he burst out laughing. ‘You’re bloody incredible, Harry, you are. You’ve just wasted half the travel budget on a fiasco in the Congo and now you want a police search operation? This investigation comes to a halt right now. Do you understand?’

‘I understand …’ Harry said, pouring coffee into two cups and passing one to Hagen, ‘… so much more. And soon you will too, boss. Grab my chair and listen to this.’