Nemesis (26 page)

Arne shook his head with a laugh as fru Albu freed herself from his arm.

‘Did you think I was her new lover?’ Harry persisted. ‘And because you thought I wouldn’t dare do anything in case my name might be brought up in the case, you thought you could play with me a little, torment me, drive me insane, was that how it was?’

‘Come on, Arne! Christian wants to give a speech!’ A man with a glass and cigar in hand stood swaying at the top of the stairs.

‘Start without me,’ Arne said. ‘I’ll just remove this nice gentleman first.’

The man furrowed his brow. ‘Trouble, eh?’

‘Not at all,’ Vigdis hastened to say. ‘Just join the others, Thomas.’

The man shrugged and left.

‘The other thing which amazes me is that, even after I had confronted you with the photo, you were arrogant enough to continue sending me e-mails,’ Harry said.

‘I regret to have to repeat myself, Constable,’ Albu slurred, ‘but what are these . . . these e-mails you keep going on about?’

‘Right. A lot of people think you can send an e-mail anonymously by subscribing to a server without giving your real name. That is a fallacy. My hacker friend has just told me that everything – absolutely everything – you do on the Net leaves an electronic trail which can be, and in this case will be, traced back to the machine they are sent
from. It’s just a question of knowing where to look.’ Harry pulled out a packet of cigarettes from his inside pocket.

‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t . . .’ Vigdis began, but broke off.

‘Tell me, herr Albu,’ Harry said, lighting a cigarette. ‘Where were you on the Tuesday evening of last week between eleven and one o’clock?’

Arne and Vigdis Albu exchanged glances.

‘We can do this here or at the police station,’ Harry said.

‘He was here,’ Vigdis said.

‘As I said.’ Harry blew the smoke out through his nose. He knew he was over-playing his hand, but a half-hearted bluff would fail, and there was no way back now. ‘We can do this here or at the police station. Shall I tell the guests the party’s over?’

Vigdis chewed her bottom lip. ‘But I’m telling you he was . . .’ she started. She wasn’t beautiful any longer.

‘That’s fine, Vigdis,’ Albu said and patted her on the shoulder. ‘Go and see to the guests. I’ll walk herr Hole to the gates.’

Harry could hardly feel a breath of wind although higher up it was clearly gusting. Clouds were chasing across the sky and occasionally covering the moon. They ambled.

‘Why here?’ Albu asked.

‘You asked for it.’

Albu nodded. ‘Perhaps I did. Buy why did she have to find out like this?’

Harry shrugged. ‘How did you want her to find out?’

The music had stopped and the odd salvo of laughter came from the house. Christian was under way.

‘Can I borrow a cigarette?’ Albu asked. ‘Actually, I have given up.’

Harry passed him the packet.

‘Thank you.’ Albu placed a cigarette between his lips and bent over Harry’s lighter. ‘What are you after? Money?’

‘Why does everyone ask that?’ Harry mumbled.

‘You’re on your own. You have no papers to arrest me and you try to bluff me with threats of taking me to the police station. And if you’ve been inside the chalet in Larkollen, you’re in at least as much trouble as I am.’

Harry shook his head.

‘No money?’ Albu leaned back. There were a few stars sparkling up above. ‘Something personal then? Were you lovers?’

‘I thought you knew everything about me,’ Harry said.

‘Anna took love very seriously. She loved love. No,
worshipped
, that’s the word. She
worshipped
love. That was the only thing which had any place in her life. That and hatred. Do you know what neutron stars are?’

Harry shook his head. Albu held up his cigarette. ‘They’re planets with such compactness and high surface gravity that if I dropped this cigarette on one of them it would strike with the same force as an atom bomb. It was the same with Anna. Her gravitation to love – and hatred – was so strong that nothing could exist in the space between them. Every tiny detail caused an atomic explosion. Do you understand? It took me time to understand. She was like Jupiter – hidden behind an eternal cloud of sulphur. And humour. And sexuality.’

‘Venus.’

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘Nothing.’

The moon protruded from between two clouds, and like a fictional beast the bronze hart stepped out of the shadows in the garden.

‘Anna and I had arranged to meet at midnight,’ Albu said. ‘She said she had a couple of personal things of mine she wanted to return. I was parked in Sorgenfrigata between twelve and a quarter past. We had agreed I would phone her from the car instead of ringing the bell. Because of a nosy neighbour, she said. Anyway, she didn’t answer, so I drove home.’

‘So your wife was lying?’

‘Of course. The day you arrived with the photo, we agreed she would give me an alibi.’

‘And why are you giving up the alibi now?’

Albu laughed. ‘Does it matter? We’re two people talking, with the moon as a silent witness. I can deny everything afterwards. To be frank, I don’t think you have anything you can use against me, anyway.’

‘Why don’t you tell me all the rest while you’re at it then?’

‘That I killed her, you mean?’ He laughed, louder this time. ‘It’s your job to find out, isn’t it?’

They had come to the gates.

‘You just wanted to see how I would react, didn’t you.’ Albu rubbed the cigarette against the marble. ‘And you wanted to exact your revenge, that was why you told my wife. You were angry. An angry little boy who hits out at whatever comes in his way. Are you happy?’

‘When I find the e-mail address, I’ve got you,’ Harry said. He wasn’t angry any more. Just tired.

‘You won’t find any e-mail address,’ Albu said. ‘Sorry, old chap. We can continue this game, but you can’t win.’

Harry struck out. The sound of knuckles on flesh was dull and brief. Albu staggered back a pace, holding his brow.

Harry could see his own grey breath in the darkness of the night. ‘You’ll have to get that sewn up,’ he said.

Albu looked at his blood-stained hand and guffawed. ‘My God, Harry, what a terrible loser you are. Is it OK if we use first names? I think this has brought us closer together, don’t you?’

Harry didn’t answer, and Albu laughed louder.

‘What did she see in you, Harry? Anna didn’t like losers. At least she wouldn’t let them fuck her.’

The laughter rose higher and higher as Harry walked back to the taxi, and the jagged edges of the car keys cut into his skin as his hand closed tighter and tighter around them.

H
ARRY WOKE UP TO THE TELEPHONE RINGING AND SQUINTED
at the clock. 7.30. It was Øystein. He had left Harry’s flat only three hours ago. Then he had located the server in Egypt and now he had made further progress.

‘I’ve e-mailed an old friend. He lives in Malaysia and does a bit of small-time hacking. The ISP is in El Tor, on the Sinai peninsula. They have quite a few ISPs there, it’s a sort of centre. Were you asleep?’

‘Kind of. How will you find our client?’

‘There’s only one way, I’m afraid. Go there with a thick wad of American greenbacks.’

‘How much?’

‘Enough to make someone tell you who to talk to. And to make the person you talk to tell you who you
really
have to talk to. And to make the person you really—’

‘I’ve got you. How much?’

‘A grand should make some headway.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Off the top of my head. What the fuck do I know?’

‘OK. Will you take the job?’

‘Course.’

‘I pay shit. You travel on the cheapest plane and stay in a crap hotel.’

‘Deal.’

It was twelve o’clock and the Police HQ canteen was packed. Harry clenched his teeth and went in. He didn’t dislike his colleagues on principle; he disliked them by instinct. And, as the years went by, it was getting worse.

‘Completely normal paranoia,’ Aune had called it. ‘I feel the same myself. I think all psychologists are after me, whereas in reality it is probably no more than half of them.’

Harry scanned the room and spotted Beate with her packed lunch and the back of someone keeping her company. Harry tried not to notice the looks he received from the tables he passed. Someone mumbled a ‘Hi’, but Harry assumed it was meant ironically and didn’t answer.

‘Am I disturbing?’

Beate looked up at Harry as if he had caught her in the act.

‘Not at all,’ said a familiar voice, getting up. ‘I was about to go anyway.’

The hairs on Harry’s neck rose – not on principle, but by instinct.

‘See you this evening then.’ Tom Waaler smiled, a white flash to Beate’s beetroot face. He took his tray, nodded to Harry and left. Beate stared down into her goat’s cheese as she tried her best to assume a sensible expression while Harry took a seat.

‘Well?’

‘Well what?’ she chirped, overdoing the failure to understand.

‘You said on my answerphone you had something new,’ Harry said. ‘I gathered it was urgent.’

‘I’ve worked it out.’ Beate drank from the glass of milk. ‘The drawings the program made of the Expeditor’s face. I’ve been racking my brains who they reminded me of.’

‘Do you mean the printouts you showed me? There’s nothing even remotely like a face, it’s just random lines on paper.’

‘Nevertheless.’

Harry shrugged. ‘You’re the one with the
fusiform gyrus
. Out with it.’

‘Last night it came to me who it was.’ She took another mouthful of milk and wiped her milky smile on the serviette.

‘Well?’

‘Trond Grette.’

Harry stared at her. ‘You’re kidding, aren’t you?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I just said there was a certain likeness. After all, Grette was not far from Bogstadveien at the time of the murder. But, as I said, I’ve worked it out.’

‘And how . . . ?’

‘I checked with Gaustad hospital. If it’s the same person who held up the DnB branch in Kirkeveien, it can’t be Grette. At that time he was sitting in the TV room with at least three carers. And I sent off a couple of boys from
Krimteknisk
to Grette’s place to get a fingerprint. Weber has just compared it with the print on the Coca-Cola bottle. It is definitely not his print.’

‘So you were wrong for once?’

Beate shook her head. ‘We’re looking for a person who has a number of identical external characteristics to Grette.’

‘Sorry to have to say this, Beate, but Grette has no external or any other kind of characteristics. He’s an accountant who looks like an accountant. I’ve already forgotten what he looks like.’

‘Right,’ she said, taking the greaseproof paper off her next sandwich. ‘But I haven’t. That’s the crunch.’

‘Mm. I may have some good news.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘I’m on my way to Botsen. Raskol wanted to talk to me.’

‘Wow. Good luck.’

‘Thank you.’ Harry stood up. Hesitated. Took a deep breath. ‘I know I’m not your father, but may I be allowed to say one thing?’

‘Be my guest.’

He peered round to make sure no one could hear them. ‘I’d watch it with Waaler, if I were you.’

‘Thank you.’ Beate took a large bite of her sandwich. ‘And the bit about yourself and my father is correct.’

‘I’ve lived in Norway all my life,’ Harry said. ‘Grew up in Oppsal. My parents were teachers. My father’s retired and, since Mum died, he’s lived like a sleepwalker, only occasionally visiting the land of the living. My little sister misses him. I do too, I suppose. I miss them both. They thought I would be a teacher. I did, too. But it was Police College instead. And a bit of law. Were you to ask me why I became a policeman, I would be able to give you ten sensible answers, but not one I believed myself. I don’t think about it any longer. It’s a job, they pay me, and now and then I think I do something good – you can live off that for a long time. I was an alcoholic before I was thirty. Perhaps before I was twenty, it depends on how you look at things. They say it’s in your genes. Possibly. When I grew up I found out my grandfather in Åndalsnes had been drunk every day for fifty years. We went there every summer until I was fifteen and never noticed a thing. Unfortunately I haven’t inherited that talent. I’ve done things which have not exactly gone unnoticed. In a nutshell, it’s a miracle I’ve still got a job in the police force.’

Harry looked up at the
NO SMOKING
sign and lit up.

‘Anna and I were lovers for six weeks. She didn’t love me. I didn’t love her. When I stopped, I did her a greater favour than I did myself. She didn’t see it like that.’

The other man in the room nodded.

‘I’ve loved three women in my life,’ Harry continued. ‘The first was a childhood sweetheart I was going to marry until everything went pear-shaped for us both. She took her life a long time after I’d stopped seeing her, and that had nothing to do with me. The second was murdered by a man I was chasing on the other side of the globe.
The same happened to a female colleague of mine, Ellen. I don’t know why but women around me die. Perhaps it’s the genes.’

‘What about the third woman?’

The third woman. The third key. Harry stroked the initials AA and the edges of the key Raskol had passed him over the table when he was let in. Harry had asked if it was identical to the one he had received and Raskol had nodded.

Then he had asked Harry to talk about himself.

Now Raskol was sitting with his elbows resting on the table and his fingers interlaced as if in prayer. The defective neon tube had been replaced and the light on his face was like bluish-white powder.

‘The third woman is in Moscow,’ Harry said. ‘I think she’s a survivor.’

‘She’s yours?’

‘I wouldn’t put it like that.’

‘But you’re together?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re planning to spend the rest of your lives together?’

‘Well. We don’t plan. It’s a little too early for that.’

Raskol gave him a doleful smile. ‘
You
don’t plan, you mean. But women plan. Women always plan.’

‘Like you?’

Raskol shook his head. ‘I only know how to plan bank robberies. All men are amateurs in the capturing of hearts. We may believe we have a conquest, like a general capturing a fortress, and then we discover too late – if at all – that we have been duped. Have you heard of Sun Tzu?’