Death in Oslo (25 page)

He opened the big, beautiful carved door to his office. The lamp on his desk was on, and bathed the many carpets that
lay on the floor in a golden light. There was a faint humming from the computer and a fragrant smell of cinnamon made him open a cupboard by the window. Here he found a newly made pot of tea, ready on a stand. The last servant always made sure that this was done before leaving the office wing so that Abdallah could complete his evening duties in peace. He poured himself a glass.

This time they would not close ranks.

The thought made him smile. He drank half a glass of tea before sitting down at the computer. It took him a matter of seconds to pull up the ColonelCars’ website. There he read that it was with great sadness that the management had to announce the death of the company’s CEO, Tom Patrick O’Reilly, in a tragic accident. The management expressed their deepest sympathies to the director’s family and reassured their clients that their extensive international operations would continue to be run in the spirit of the deceased, and that 2005 already looked set to be a record year.

Abdallah had his confirmation and logged out.

He would never again think of his old university friend Tom O’Reilly.

T
he man who had just collected his dead mother’s personal belongings from the hospital locked the door behind him and went into his sitting room. For a moment he stood there, at a loss, staring down at the anonymous bag that contained his mother’s clothes and rucksack. He was still holding it in his hand and didn’t quite know what to do.

The doctor had taken time to talk to him. He had comforted him by saying that it had been quick and his mother would hardly have known that anything was wrong before she collapsed. She had been found by another walker, he told him, but unfortunately the old woman had died before she got to hospital. The doctor’s smile was warm and open and he said something to the effect that he hoped he would die in much the same way, in the forest one May day, as a healthy eighty-year-old with an alert mind.

Eighty years and five days, thought the son, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. No one could complain about getting to that age.

He put the bag down on the dining table. In a way it seemed undignified to unpack it. He tried to win over his reluctance to go through his mother’s belongings; it felt like breaking his childhood rule number one: don’t poke your nose in other people’s business.

The rucksack lay on top. He opened it gingerly. A tin lunch box was the first thing he saw. He took it out. The lid had once sported a picture of the Geiranger Fjord in
brilliant sunshine, and an old-fashioned luxury steamship. Now all that remained of it was some dirty blue water and grey sky. He had given her a new bright red plastic lunch box a couple of years ago. She immediately went and exchanged it for a hand whisk, as there was no point in replacing a perfectly usable lunch box.

He emptied the rest of the contents of the rucksack on to the table, and smiled at the thought of his mother’s grim face every time he tried to force something new on her. A worn map of Nordmarka. A compass that certainly didn’t point north; the red arrow wavered back and forth as if it had drunk some of the alcohol it lay in.

Under the rucksack was her walking jacket. He lifted it up and held it to his cheek. The smell of the old woman and the forest brought tears to his eyes again. He held the jacket out and carefully brushed away the leaves and twigs that were caught on one of the arms.

Something fell out of the pocket.

He folded the jacket and put it down beside the contents of the rucksack. Then he bent down to pick up whatever it was that had fallen to the floor.

A wallet?

It was made of leather, and was quite small. But it was unexpectedly heavy. He opened it and caught himself laughing out loud.

He mustn’t laugh, so he gulped and sniffed and opened his eyes wide to stop the tears.

But he couldn’t stop laughing and had problems breathing.

His obstinate eighty-year-old mother had met her death with a Secret Service ID card in her pocket.

The wallet could be opened like a small book. The right side was adorned with a gold-coloured metal badge with an eagle on it, spreading its wings over a shield with a star in the middle. It reminded him of the sheriff’s badge he’d got from
his father for Christmas when he was eight, and now he was no longer laughing.

On the left-hand side, in a plastic pocket, was an ID card. It belonged to a man called Jeffrey William Hunter. A good-looking man, judging by the photo. He had short, thick hair and a serious expression in his big eyes.

The middle-aged man, who had just lost his only remaining parent, was a taxi driver. His shift had long since started, but his car stood idle outside. He had not sent a message to say that he couldn’t work. In fact, he had thought that driving around in town would be just as good as sitting here at home, alone with his grief. Now he was no longer so sure. He examined the painstakingly made badge. He could not for the life of him fathom why his mother was in possession of something like that. The only answer that he could come up with was that she had found it in the forest. Someone must have lost it there.

There were plenty of Secret Service agents in town right now. He had seen them himself, around Akershus Fort, when there was that official dinner there the other night.

He studied the unknown man’s face again.

It was so serious that it almost looked sad.

The taxi driver suddenly stood up. He left his mother’s belongings lying on the table and grabbed his keys from the hook just inside the front door.

A Secret Service badge was not something you could send in the post. It might be important. He would drive straight to the police.

Now.

‘Y
ou are truly unbelievable,’ Adam Stubo said.

Gerhard Skrøder was lying more than sitting in his chair. His legs were wide apart and his head was laid back, his eyes fixed on something on the ceiling. The dark bags under his eyes were in stark contrast to his white skin, and made his nose seem even larger. The man whose nickname was the Chancellor had not touched the coffee or the bottle of mineral water that Adam Stubo had given him. ‘I wonder,’ the detective chief inspector continued, pulling his ear, ‘whether you boys actually realise how idiotic that advice actually is. Don’t tip your chair!’

The legs of the chair crashed to the floor.

‘What advice?’ the man asked reluctantly. He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled at the floor. The two had not had any eye contact yet.

‘The rubbish that your lawyers feed you about keeping your mouth shut when you’re being questioned by the police. Can’t you see how stupid it is?’

‘It’s worked before.’ The man laughed and shrugged without sitting up in the chair. ‘And in any case, I haven’t done anyhing wrong. It’s not illegal to drive around in Norway.’

‘There you go!’ Adam chuckled. For the first time he glimpsed something that looked like interest in Gerhard Skrøder’s eyes.

‘What the fuck do you mean?’ Skrøder asked and grabbed the bottle of water. He was looking straight at Adam Stubo now.

‘You always keep your mouth shut. And then we know you’re guilty. But that’s just a red rag to a bull, you see. We don’t get anything for free from you boys, so we’re even more focused on making sure that we do. And you see . . .’ he leant over the old, worn table that separated them, ‘in cases like this, where you actually think you’ve done nothing illegal, you can’t help yourself. Not in the long run. Let’s see, it took . . .’ he looked up at the clock, ‘twenty-three minutes before you were tempted to speak. Don’t you realise that we broke that stupid code of yours years ago? A person who is innocent always talks. A person who talks is often guilty. A person who is silent is always guilty. I know what strategy I would have chosen, put it that way.’

Gerhard Skrøder ran a dirty index finger down the ridge of his nose. The nail was black and bitten to the quick. He started tipping his chair again, backwards and forwards. He was more uneasy now, and pulled his cap down over his eyes. Adam reached over for a pad of A4 paper, picked up a felt tip and started to scribble something down without saying a word.

Gerhard Skrøder had not been difficult to find. He had been enjoying himself with a whore from Lithuania, in a tenement in Grünerløkka. The flat was one of many in the extensive police register of places where criminals hung out. The patrol that had been sent out to find him hit bull’s eye on the third attempt. Only a few hours after he had been identified by Adam on a grainy CCTV recording from a twenty-four-hour petrol station, he was in a cell. He had stewed there for an hour or two and had sworn out loud at the sight of Adam Stubo, when he came to collect him.

Since then, he had said nothing. Until now.

Silence was obviously harder to deal with than all Adam’s questions and accusations and references to photographic evidence. Gerhard Skrøder chewed at the remains of his thumbnail. One of his thighs was shaking. He coughed
and opened the bottle of water. Adam carried on drawing, a psychedelic pattern of blood-red stripes and stars.

‘I’ll wait for my lawyer, that’s for sure,’ Gerhard said eventually and sat up in the chair. ‘And I have the right to know what you’re accusing me of doing. I was just driving around with a couple of people in the car. Since when’s that been illegal, eh?’

Adam took his time putting the top back on the felt tip and then put it down. He still did not say a word.

‘And what the fuck has happened to Ove Rønbeck?’ Gerhard complained, obviously having thrown his original strategy overboard. ‘You’re not allowed to talk to me without my lawyer being present, you know!’

‘Yes, yes,’ Adam said. ‘I am. I can, for example, ask you whether you would like a fresh coffee. You haven’t even touched that one and it’ll be cold by now.’

Gerhard gave a sullen shake of the head.

‘And I can do you another favour.’ Adam stood up and walked along beside the table for a couple of steps, then sat down on the edge, half turned away from Gerhard.

‘What’s that?’ muttered the arrestee into his bottle.

‘Are you happy for me to do you a favour before your lawyer gets here?’

‘Fuck it, Stubo! What the hell are you talking about?’

Adam sniffed and wiped his nose on his shirt sleeve. It was unexpectedly cold in the room. The air-conditioning must have been put on the wrong setting. Perhaps it had been done on purpose, to expel the heat of so many officers working round the clock in the building. Even now, at half past seven in the evening, when the corridors were normally pretty deserted, with rows and rows of closed rooms, you could hear doors slamming and footsteps, voices and the jangling of keys; as much noise as on a busy Friday morning in June.

His jacket was hanging over the chair. He slipped down
from the table and grabbed it. As he put it on, he smiled and said in a friendly tone: ‘I have never liked you, Gerhard.’

The man picked at a scab and didn’t answer.

‘And perhaps that’s why,’ Adam continued, straightening his jacket, ‘for once, I’m quite happy that you’re keeping your mouth shut.’

Gerhard played with his cap and opened his mouth to say something. He changed his mind a little too late and the word mutated into a strange grunt before he clenched his teeth. He slouched back in the chair again and vigorously scratched his crotch.

‘Very happy.’ Adam nodded in emphasis. He was standing with his back to the arrestee now, as if he was speaking to an imaginary third person. ‘Because I don’t like you. And because you’re behaving in the way that you are, I can just release you.’

He spun round and made an inviting gesture towards the closed door.

‘I can let you go,’ he said. ‘Because the people out there use completely different methods from the ones that I’m allowed to use. Completely different.’

He laughed, as if the thought of letting Gerhard Skrøder go pleased him greatly.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I think I’ve made up my mind,’ Adam said, again as if he was talking to someone else. ‘Then I don’t have to put up with all this nonsense. I can go home. Call it a day.’ He patted down his jacket, as if to check that he had his wallet and keys with him before leaving. ‘And then I’ll never have to see you again. One crook fewer for the police to waste resources on.’

‘
What the fuck are you talking about?
’

Gerhard slammed his fist down on the table.

‘You said we should wait for your lawyer.’ Adam smiled. ‘So you can sit here and do just that. Only alone. I’ll make sure that his job is simple. You’ll be released when the paperwork
is done. A very good evening to you, Gerhard.’

He walked over to the door, unlocked it and was about to open it.

‘Wait.
Wait!
’

Adam paused with his hand on the door handle.

‘What is it?’

‘Who are you talking about? Who is it who . . . What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Gerhard, come on . . . they call you the Chancellor, don’t they? I would have thought you’d have some idea about international relations with a name like that.’

‘Fuck, I . . .’

A thin layer of sweat had appeared on his pallid face, and finally Gerhard pulled off his cap. His hair was flat and greasy, and a matted lock fell down over his eyes. He tried to blow it away.

‘D’you mean the Americans?’ he asked.

‘Bingo,’ Adam grinned. ‘Good luck.’

He pressed down the door handle.

‘Wait. Wait a moment, Stubo! The Americans don’t bloody well have any authority to—’

Adam burst out laughing. He threw back his head and roared. The bare walls in the sterile room made the laughter sound sharp and hard.

‘Americans? Authority? The Americans!’

He was laughing so hard that he could scarcely speak. He let go of the door handle and clutched his stomach, shook his head and hiccuped.

The arrestee sat watching, with his mouth open. He had a long history with the police and had lost count of the number of times he had been questioned by some idiot pig or other. But he had never experienced anything like this before. His pulse started racing. He could hear the blood pounding in his ears, and his throat tightened. He saw red specks in front
of his eyes. He twisted his cap in his hands. When Adam Stubo had to put his hand against the wall to stop himself from collapsing with laughter, Gerhard Skrøder frantically rummaged in his pocket for his inhaler. It was the only thing he had been allowed to keep when he was searched and his belongings were confiscated. He put it to his mouth. His hands were shaking.