We Are Death (32 page)

At last Jericho looked round at Markussen.

‘Something’s happening here, Inspector, and I would put money on it happening tonight. We believe a lot of people are going to be killed.’

Markussen held his gaze for a moment, seemingly drawn in by the seriousness of the situation, then he smiled broadly and touched both of them on the arm.

‘Awesome sauce,’ he said.

His attitude was so different from the air of melancholy and earnestness that had marked the working relationship of Jericho and Badstuber up to that point that neither of them really knew what to do with it. How to handle a young officer who seemed genuinely pleased to be in the middle of a case of mass murder.

‘You have Mr Geyerson?’ asked Badstuber.

Markussen shook his head.

‘We spoke to him, but he left. Didn’t exactly have cause to take him into custody, although as the one survivor of his climbing team, I suppose it’s always possible he’s a suspect. You guys consider that?’

‘We’ve considered everything,’ said Jericho, annoyance flooding into his voice. ‘Do you have someone trailing Geyerson? We need to know wh–’

‘Better than that,’ said Markussen, still resolutely cheerful, despite Jericho’s frustration. ‘Managed to slip a tracking device into his jacket pocket, so we’ve got him covered. As long as, you know, he doesn’t leave his jacket in a taxi.’

‘You know where he is now?’ asked Jericho.

‘Sure beans.’

Jericho glanced at Badstuber, his eyebrow slightly raised at the awfulness of working with youth, and then turned back to Markussen.

‘Can we go?’

Markussen smiled again.

‘Follow me!’

––––––––

H
aynes had gone down to the waterfront. Maybe it was where people always went when they didn’t live by the sea. Maybe it was where they went anyway. You could stand and look at the sea in a way you couldn’t stand and look at the other side of the street, or even across a park.

Not that the sea was particularly expansive at this point, the other side of the fjord being little more than three miles away.

He felt helpless, felt as though he wasn’t doing a particularly good job. Too wrapped up in the disappearance of Leighton to fully apply himself to this case. But then, what was the case? All they were doing was trailing around in the wake of a killer. They were no nearer discovering his identity, and their investigation amounted to them being little more than murder tourists.

The new batch of Death cards – the batch! – were in his inside pocket. He’d enlarged one with the help of his iPad, although it had shown him little, and the image hadn’t been particularly clear. Once again his frustration had overtaken him. He’d grown restless after little more than a few minutes in his hotel room, and he’d had to walk outside again.

They were slowly making the connections regarding The Pavilion and what it was that Geyerson might be up to, and therefore what was behind the killings, yet it all felt so abstract. The killer was so efficient, so clinical, so detached, that it was as though it was happening in a different realm. Another world.

Hands in his pockets, staring out across the water, Akershus Fortress away to his right, his phone rang. Something to do, he thought, and hoped it wouldn’t be someone from his family on for a chat.

He didn’t recognise the number.

‘Hello?’

‘Stuart!’

Relief flooded over him at the sound of her voice. For a moment he felt weak, genuinely weak, like some absurd nineteenth century literary version of deliverance.

‘Jesus, where are you?’

She was laughing, her feelings the same at managing to get hold of him.

‘Oslo,’ she said. ‘I mean, God, I’m in Oslo! I don’t even know why.’

The relief disappeared from him, replaced by a strange anxiety, coupled with the delight at her being in the same city.

‘You’re in Oslo?’

‘Yes,’ she said, and she was still laughing. ‘Where are you? Are you in Wells?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘We’re in Oslo too.’

‘What?’

The laughter left her voice, replaced by the same concern.

‘Why are you here?’ she asked.

‘Jesus, this is weird,’ he said. ‘Where are you?’

There was a pause, and he could imagine her looking around, trying to get her bearings.

‘Not entirely sure,’ she said. ‘I just found myself at a phone shop, bought this old, cheap Nokia. But Oslo’s pretty small. Where are you?’

‘At the waterfront. D’you know the new opera house?’

‘It was still under construction the last time I was here, but yes, I know where it is.’

‘I can be there in a couple of minutes. Can you find your way there?’

‘Sure. Might take me a bit longer, but I’ll be there.’

‘OK, good. See you shortly.’

They hung up.

And with the press of the button, Haynes immediately had a bad feeling. It was too easy, too strange. He’d spent the day worrying about her, wanting to see her, wanting to know she was all right. In all that, however, what he’d been looking for was a telephone call saying she was happy and safe in the UK somewhere, apologising for having run out on him. No matter how unlikely that had been, given her departure from the library with Develin. That she was here, now, in the same city, seemed sinister. Not for the first time, he felt like they were being played.

If he and Leighton were about to meet, it was because The Pavilion wanted them to meet. And maybe they wouldn’t let them meet at all.

He suddenly wished he’d got her to stay where she was, and that he could have gone searching for her. Instead, he would have to stand still, a spectator to the action, hoping that it unfolded the way he wanted it to.

He stood for a moment, took the phone back out his pocket and returned the call. The phone did not ring.

*

T
here were four of them in the unmarked car. Jericho, Badstuber and Markussen, with a police driver. Markussen was in the front passenger seat. In his right hand he held a small device that showed the blinking pinpoint of Geyerson’s location.

‘This is such a cool piece of kit,’ he said. ‘Totally sick, man. And you don’t have to worry about the dude finding it or anything. It’s totally miniscule. I mean, like completely tiny, man. There really is a far greater chance he’d just forget his damn jacket somewhere than there is of him putting his hand in his pocket and thinking, like, what the fuck, man?’

A talker, Jericho had thought as soon as they’d sat down, and Markussen had continued talking. Worse still. A talker in a confined space.

‘You guys got anything like this?’ he asked, waving the device.

‘Yes,’ said Badstuber.

Jericho shook his head.

‘You poor bloody British suckers,’ said Markussen. ‘On the plus side, everyone speaks your language. On the downside, you’re broke and playing way out of your league. You’ll probably get these things when no one else is using them anymore and we’ve all moved on to something better.’

Jericho didn’t engage, but it wasn’t as though he didn’t completely agree. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t be for him. He would be long gone, living on his Hebridean island, looking at the sea.

That was the plan, right?

‘It’s not moving,’ said Jericho, hoping to get the conversation back onto the investigation. Indeed, hoping for absolutely no conversation at all about anything, but if there was going to be some, it might as well be relevant to why they were there.

‘No, hasn’t for a while. Looks like he’s come to rest. It’s not far from here, so we’ll be slowing it down, maybe make a drive past to check it out. Nice area. A lot of big houses. I think we’re going to find guards on the gate. Or, at the very least, a big fucking gate, you know what I’m saying? You don’t mind if I say fuck?’

He glanced in the mirror, and didn’t receive any noticeable opprobrium.

‘Coolio,’ he added.

They drove in silence for a few moments, but Markussen wasn’t the type to allow that to last very long.

‘So, we’ll see where he is, then we can scope the joint, probably send a drone over...’

‘You have police drones?’ asked Jericho.

‘Like, sure, man. Totally. I love those things. Not... I’m not saying I get to fly ‘em. Anyhoo, we do that, and we get onto city and get the plans for the house, see if there are any weak spots. I mean, obviously, we’re the police and we can just barge in there if we want, but I expect you don’t want to do that. Not a lot of point, is there? If there’s something going down, chances are it stops the second we announce our arrival. So better to arrive unannounced, eh? OK, cool, this is the street. Third house on the left. Hey, I knew this South African guy once, and when he said, like,
third house on the left
, it sounded like he was saying
third arse on the left
. It was too funny, man. Nice and easy, but don’t slow too much, Henrik. OK, there we go, yep... guards. Probably best if we don’t all stare. I don’t really need to tell Henrik not to slow down, he’s been doing this shit for forty years. Henrik thinks I’m a bit of a dick, don’t you, Henrik?’

‘Bigger dick than that,’ said Henrik, with a thick accent.

Markussen laughed, then they were beyond the property, moving along the street, looking up at more huge houses set back from the road.

Geyerson’s house was large, up a slight hill, modern, on three stories. There was a guard post, with blacked out windows, more guards obviously positioned at the top of the driveway.

‘They didn’t look like the same guys who were guarding Geyerson at the restaurant,’ said Badstuber.

‘No,’ said Jericho.

‘So we don’t know how many guards we’re dealing with,’ said Markussen. ‘Cool. I’ll get onto the local security companies, see if any of them are talking.’

Jericho immediately presumed they’d never divulge that information, but maybe things were different. Here he was, third country in a row, out of his comfort zone, feeling little more than a spectator.

Round another corner, then the driver started to pick up speed as they headed back towards the centre of town.

‘You guys want to come back to the station, we’ll try to put some shit together about the house?’

Jericho caught his eye in the mirror and nodded.

‘Coolio.’

Finally Markussen seemed happy to allow the car to fall into silence. They watched the grey, late summer’s day in Oslo pass them by. The calm settled easily upon them, as though Markussen had finally decided it was time to allow the rest of the car its will. Back onto busier streets, they stopped at a red light, third car in the line, and watched the pedestrians stream across.

Jericho and Badstuber could feel it. There was a chance of some resolution. They were coming to it at last. And as they looked out windows at either side of the car, Jericho was aware of her next to him, aware that she was thinking about him. And he was worried about her, because he knew the evening was unlikely to pass without incident. And when you couldn’t see the assassin, you had no idea where the bullet was coming from, or at whom it would be aimed.

––––––––

H
aynes stood on the promenade – the sloping roof of the opera house rising behind him – amongst the tourists, looking between and through the crowd, hoping to see her. He didn’t know her well enough yet to know if she regularly wore the same clothes, the same jacket. It was warm, she likely wouldn’t be wearing any jacket.

He dialled the number again. Fifth time. It still wasn’t ringing.

His feeling of impotence increased with every moment; the worry snarled in his stomach. Why hadn’t he got her to stay on the phone? They could have talked as she walked. She could have told him what had happened to her and how it was that she managed to be walking through a foreign capital with a new phone.

He turned round, glanced up at the roof, the great sloping walkway that comes right down to pavement level. There were easily two hundred people walking up there.

He looked back over the immediate crowd again, then turned and walked quickly up the slope. He walked about halfway up, then turned and looked down over the crowds, over the surrounding area, the water in front of the opera house and the streets and hotels beyond.

There was no sign of her.

His phone rang. Heart in his mouth, he put it straight to his ear without looking at the number. Jericho’s voice was like a giant weight, crushing the last glimmer of hope.

‘We’re on.’

Haynes swallowed, confused, his eyes still darting here and there, desperately, over the crowd.

‘What?’

‘Game’s afoot. Need you at Police HQ. They’re expecting you at the front desk. I’ll text the address.’

Jericho hung up. Haynes slowly lowered the phone from his ear, and once again looked at his watch. It had been forty-five minutes. What if she took forty-seven minutes?

He let out an exasperated breath. He had no choice. The boss wanted him, and how could he argue? It wasn’t like he was waiting for a six-year-old. If Leighton got here eventually, and everything was all right, she could call him again.

Another look at the phone, as though just staring at it would make it ring, then he put it in his pocket and walked quickly down towards the promenade.

*

‘W
hat didn’t you understand?’

Leighton sat with her head down, the car moving slowly in a queue of traffic. Develin was sitting beside her in the back seat, his head still, eyes diverted past the driver’s headrest to the street ahead. He had barely looked at her since his man had pointed the gun at her, she’d considered making the run, and then had reluctantly given herself up.

Not knowing that Develin had already ordered Haynes’s murder, she was going to do everything to make sure he was safe. Everything, that was, short of never seeing him again.

‘Professor, you seem like an intelligent woman.’

‘You never told me I had to make my decision in the next twenty minutes,’ she said.

Her voice was without conviction. If she had seen Haynes, her intention had been to tell him everything. She hadn’t had to think about it. The chance to learn so much history no one else knew was, of course, appealing. But what was the use of knowing things that were not generally known, and what was the point of choosing to live without the person you’d decided might be the one you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, when you couldn’t even live with yourself?