Closed for Winter (25 page)

Before the leader of the Emergency Squad was in position in the makeshift command centre, the robbers had intimidated their way into the bank note storage room. The male guard, held at bay by the man with the machine gun, stood beside the wall, while the woman keyed in the code on the first vault door. No alarms had sounded.

Wisting saw how Kurt Owesen’s eyes flitted across the screens. They had not planned for this. The veins on his temples were swollen, and there was a distinct cracking from the muscles of his jaw.

Suddenly he moved, barking commands over the radio. ‘We have a hostage situation. Two guards held at gunpoint in the cash centre. Adversaries are two men, one armed with a two-handed automatic weapon, the other with a handgun.’

On the CCTV screen, Wisting watched bundles of banknotes from the first strongroom being packed into a capacious bag while the female guard was forced to open storage vault number two. The raid would be over in minutes.

The Emergency Squad leader issued orders to launch a counter attack. They would strike as the robbers fled, provided they left the two guards behind. How the two masked men thought they could get away was incomprehensible. No other vehicles had appeared.

The second storage vault was emptied. Two full bags were already at the door. The taller of the two robbers spoke into a two-way radio and Kurt Owesen quickly relayed that the thieves must have accomplices outside.

Messages flashed on the screen. Attaching the radio to a clip on his chest, the masked raider stepped towards the CCTV camera and stared into it. Wisting gazed into a pair of dark eyes before his weapon was raised. The butt of the gun slammed hard against the lens and the screen went blank. Automatically, Wisting took a pace backwards, not knowing whether it was the blow against the camera or the glowering look that had frightened him.

He looked at the main road. Nothing. He lifted his eyes to the clouds, after a sudden thought that the robbers’ help might come from there. He then spoke into the police radio to update his officers in their unmarked vehicles.

Benjamin Fjeld reported back from his observation post:
‘A Chevrolet Suburban has just gone past. Impossible to see the number plate. That could be the getaway car.’

Kurt Owesen relayed the message to his officers. Wisting heard a rasping sound in his earpiece as the action groups acknowledged the information.

One of the screens showed images from the garage interior. He could see what was going on through the open door of the banknote storage room. The third storage vault looked empty when it was opened.

The smaller of the two raiders pressed the barrel of his revolver against the female guard’s neck as she tried to explain a practical problem. The two guards exchanged places. The man keyed in the combination and the heavy door swung open. Simultaneously, the message
Alarm #
4 Alarm
appeared as a line of text at the top of the screen. None of the people in the picture reacted. The guard must have keyed in a combination of numbers to trigger the threat alarm as the vault door opened.

Half a minute later, it looked like it was over as the four bags were carried from the depot by the robbers. The Emergency Squad leader relayed this to the officers waiting downstairs.

Wisting leaned his head on the window to see as much as possible of the main road. A lorry passed, followed by two delivery vans. Swearing out loud, he looked at the screen again. The raiders were heading for the exit with the female guard in front of them. Wisting still could not understand how they entered the building, and had no idea how they meant to escape.

It then dawned on him as absolutely obvious. He was not sure whether he understood or saw it first. A large rubber dinghy, a Zodiac, approached along the river, slightly less elaborate than the type that had arrived from Denmark with the cargo of drugs. A masked man stood behind the steering console. Slowing down, he manoeuvred towards the riverbank.

On screen, the door of the banknote storage vault slammed behind the robbers. In a matter of minutes, seconds, they would be gone. The Emergency Squad officers would never regroup in time.

Wisting stormed out of the room into the corridor, smashed open the emergency exit at the rear of the fire station, and clattered down the spiral fire stairs on the building’s exterior. At the foot, he drew his gun, releasing the safety catch as he ran.

The two robbers pushed the female guard ahead of them. They must have left the man inside. The woman fell over, and the smaller of the raiders put down one of his bags to haul her to her feet again. None of them had spotted Wisting.

The speedboat was at the jetty, its distance from the robbers less than fifty metres. Wisting could cut them off, but paused as the female guard stumbled and fell for a second time.

‘Armed police!’ He shouted his routine warning, shielding himself behind a telegraph pole. ‘Stand still!’

Twenty metres away, the two masked raiders froze. The woman lay for a moment before clambering to her feet and running to safety.

Wisting withdrew behind the pole, though it afforded him little cover. The man armed with the machine gun dropped the bags he was carrying and pointed the machine gun at him. Repeating his warning, Wisting curled his forefinger around the trigger, aiming at the man’s chest. Rain streamed down his face. The pressure on the trigger increased. Wisting made eye contact and something he saw made him straighten his finger.

The man in the boat shouted and the raider grabbed the bags and raced towards the river. Plunging forward, Wisting fired a series of six shots. As the explosive noise hurt his eardrums, the stench of lead assaulted his nose. The shots entered the bow of the boat, piercing the left inflatable tube. He lowered his revolver, watching the masked man on board accelerate into the middle of the river. The boat tilted in the water.

‘Armed police! Drop your weapon!’ Wisting heard a rough command at his side.

The leader of the Emergency Squad stood legs apart with a revolver in his hand. The two robbers were at the jetty, and paid no attention to the warning. Wisting could hear one of the armoured cars approaching.

The boat, already low in the water, was heading back to the jetty. The Emergency Squad leader repeated his command, and the raider carrying the machine gun dropped the bags and raised his weapon. Kurt Owesen fired a shot from Wisting’s flank, and the man fell to the ground.

Three armoured vehicles rushed forward, forming a barricade between Wisting and the river. Armed police officers spread themselves in fan formation, shouting commands.

The Zodiac keeled over, capsized and was carried off by the current, the man aboard clinging on desperately.

On the jetty, the smaller of the robbers let go of his bags and put his hands in the air.

The man who had played the more active part in the robbery was on his knees, his hands behind his neck. One of the Emergency Squad officers handcuffed him and pulled the balaclava from his head. It was Rudi Muller.

Blinking his wide eyes, he blew a raindrop from the tip of his nose. Wisting was amazed at how easily he had capitulated, until he looked at the wall of armed policemen.

Loud cries came from the riverbank when the wreck of the Zodiac drifted to land. A group of policemen dragged the drenched sailor ashore, where he was given the same treatment as Muller. A shock of curly hair was revealed when his mask was hauled off, and Wisting recognised him as the chubby man in the surveillance photographs from
Shazam Station
.

The raider who had pointed his machine gun at Wisting writhed on the ground in pain. Owesen’s bullet had struck him in the left knee. His overalls were torn and splinters of shattered kneecap were visible in the open wound. One of the members of the Emergency Squad was administering first aid, while another held him covered.

Kurt Owesen approached the injured man, with Wisting a few steps behind, wiping his wet face with the back of his hand. The leader of the Emergency Squad pulled his hood off in one swift movement. His hair, saturated with sweat and rain, was plastered to his head. His eyes were evasive, and it was impossible to make eye contact with him.

‘Name!’ Owesen demanded.

The man responded by spitting. Owesen glanced at Wisting, who shook his head. He had never clapped eyes on him before.

‘What’s your name?’ Owesen asked.

‘He’s called Frode Jessing,’ Leif Malm said from behind them. ‘They call him Yes-man,’ he added.

The uninjured robbers were placed in two separate cars. Jessing would be transported by ambulance.

Wisting looked for the two guards. He wanted to speak to them, to provide some reassuring words after their ordeal. He did not see the man, but the woman stood outside an unmarked police car, talking to a uniformed officer. Something was clutched in her hand. The policeman waved him over.

The woman could not be much older than Line. She was shaking uncontrollably, pain and desperation in her tear-stained eyes.

‘We have a new situation,’ the policeman said, nodding towards a mobile phone the woman was cradling with both hands.

Placing one hand on her trembling fingers, Wisting took hold of the phone with the other. She was reluctant to let go, as though it were extremely valuable.

There was a photo message on the display, the screen divided into two. In the top section, a little girl was making her way up a climbing frame, smiling as the photo was taken. The lower section of the photograph showed a revolver held behind a newspaper, invisible to anyone other than the person holding the camera phone.

Don’t phone anyone but me if you want her to live,
was the message underneath the picture.

‘Your daughter?’

The woman answered with a nod, covering her face with her hands.

This was how they had been able to accomplish the robbery, Wisting realised. They had threatened the female guard who let them hijack the security van, making a Trojan horse of it, to take them inside the cash depot.

Finance people had become smarter at securing their valuables these days, and less attractive to extortionists. More often now, it was guards or employees who were exposed to hostage taking or blackmail. Or police officers – he had heard how police officers in other countries had been forced to remove or delete evidence, or ensure that cases were dismissed.

‘They’ve got Emma,’ the woman sobbed. ‘She’s only five.’

Her narrow back was trembling. Wisting stroked the palm of his hand gently to and fro over her guard’s uniform while the policeman told her story.

‘She phoned the sender and was told the robbers were in a car behind them. She was ordered to stop and let them board the security van.’

Wisting curled his hand around the woman’s shoulder. ‘It’ll be all right,’ he reassured her. The conviction in his voice seemed to calm her. ‘Where was the photograph taken?’

‘In a playground near where we live. My mother is looking after her.’

Wisting pointed at the child’s red and yellow raincoat in the photo. ‘Was that what she was wearing today?’

‘I think so. They were going to the playground.’

‘Have you tried to phone your mother?’

The female guard shook her head. ‘Then they would know, you see.’ She broke down again.

Wisting shut his eyes in an effort to clear his head. He had to focus. The picture was genuine, without a doubt, and had been taken today. All the same, it was likely to be a bluff. If they had actually physically captured the girl, she would have been photographed in a closed environment, and kidnapping both the child and her grandmother would be extremely risky.

Muller sat in the back seat of a patrol car. The driver was about to sit inside when Wisting shouted over. He hurried to the vehicle and sat beside Rudi Muller. ‘I’m William Wisting,’ he said. ‘I’m responsible for the investigation.’

Rudi Muller leaned forward, his hands cuffed at his back. He looked back but did not respond. Something about him suggested that he knew who Wisting was.

‘We’re going to have a lot to talk about in the days to come,’ Wisting said, ‘but right now the situation is that nothing you say is going to be used against you. At the moment I’m only concerned about one thing.’ The man beside him remained silent.

‘The little girl,’ Wisting said. ‘Is she safe?’

The other man’s eyes narrowed. ‘What little girl?’

‘You have only this one opportunity to put right some of what you’ve started,’ Wisting said. ‘The daughter of the woman driver.’

Rudi Muller twisted to find a more comfortable position for his arms. ‘There’s no danger,’ he said quietly. ‘Nothing’s going to happen without my say so.’

Wisting asked himself what Rudi Muller’s words were worth. He decided to trust them. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and left the car, tapping a couple of times on the roof of the vehicle as a signal that the driver should leave.

Line was in an unused office of the police station, with old film posters pinned to the walls, and an internal phone list on the notice board. The desk had been stripped of phones and computers.

Outside, torrential rain fell across the dirty windows, running slowly down the pane in crooked rivulets. She was on the fourth or fifth floor, looking down on long rows of vehicles, too high to escape through the window, which could anyway be opened no more than a tiny crack. As she looked down, the streetlights came on.

Returning to the chair, she leafed restlessly through the pages of an old magazine she had now read several times. The door opened and the longhaired man entered, this time with an ID badge from
Politiet
around his neck. Behind him another policeman chewed energetically on a piece of gum.

‘I’m sorry you’ve had to wait so long,’ the first man said, ‘but we had to go about things this way. We were in the middle of a surveillance operation which you were in the process of wrecking.’

The gum-chewing policeman introduced himself. ‘I’m Petter Eikelid. Can you come with me for a minute?’

Line remained silent, but followed him into the corridor. The place was deserted, the offices in darkness, and the level of activity had reduced considerably since she arrived several hours earlier.

The longhaired detective had roughly explained what had been going on behind her back. Tommy had approached them months before with information about a group of drug dealers. His information confirmed much they already knew. Expressing willingness to help them, Tommy had infiltrated the group.

The road had been rocky, the central figures more reticent than they had anticipated, and unforeseen events had taken place. A delivery had gone wrong and people had been killed. Today had brought the end with the failed robbery leading to Rudi Muller’s arrest.

Tommy was waiting for her in an empty room on the floor below, standing at the window with his back turned, his hand on his forehead. His solemn expression changed to a smile when she entered. He embraced her, and she threw her arms around him.

‘I’ll leave you alone together,’ said the policeman.

They sat at the table, speaking almost like strangers, fumbling and hesitant.

‘I discovered that all was not as it should be at
Shazam Station
,’ Tommy said. ‘In another life, I would have shrugged it off or become involved, but I couldn’t let that happen now. I couldn’t risk spoiling things with us. I wanted to do the right thing.’

She could not understand why he had chosen to keep her in the dark, but accepted and forgave his secrecy. Impulsive, passionate, carefree, thoughtless, that was Tommy. These differences had first attracted her, but she knew she could not endure them for the rest of her life.

He understood. ‘I’m going to look at a flat in Sagene tomorrow,’ he said. Something in his tone begged her to say it was not necessary.

Steeling herself, she nodded. ‘That’s fine,’ she whispered.