The Devil's Star (7 page)

‘You don’t need to take your shoes off, boss,’ Harry shouted from the kitchen.

Møller rolled his eyes and tried not to tread on any of the empty bottles, ashtrays full of cigarette butts and old vinyl records on his way across the sitting-room floor.

‘Have you been sitting here drinking for four weeks, Harry?’

‘With some breaks, boss. Long breaks. After all, I am on holiday, aren’t I? Last week I hardly touched a drop.’

‘I’ve got some bad news for you, Harry,’ Møller shouted, releasing the catches on the window and pushing feverishly at the glass. At the third shove the window sprang open. He groaned, loosened his belt and undid the top trouser button. As he turned round he saw Harry standing by the sitting-room door with an open bottle of whisky.

‘That bad, is it,’ Harry said, noticing the Chief Inspector’s slackened belt. ‘Am I going to be whipped or ravished?’

‘Slow digestion,’ Møller explained.

‘Mm.’ Harry put the top back on the whisky bottle. ‘Funny expression that, slow digestion. I’ve been suffering with my stomach a bit myself, so I read up about it. It takes somewhere between twelve and twenty-four hours to digest food. For everyone. Whoever and whatever. It might keep hurting, but your intestines don’t need any longer.’

‘Harry . . .’

‘A glass, boss? Unless it has to be clean, that is.’

‘I’ve come to tell you it’s finished, Harry.’

‘Are you resigning?’

‘Now that’s enough of that!’

Møller banged the table so hard the empty bottles jumped. Then he sank down into a green armchair. He ran his hand across his face.

‘I’ve risked my own job too many times to save yours, Harry. There are people in my life I am closer to than you. People I provide for. This is where it stops, Harry. I can’t help you any more.’

‘Fine.’

Harry sat down on the sofa and poured whisky into one of the glasses.

‘No-one asked you to help me, boss, but thank you anyway. For as long as it lasted.
Skal.’

Møller took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

‘Do you know what, Harry? At times you are the most arrogant, the most selfish and the most unintelligent pile of shit on this planet.’

Harry shrugged his shoulders and emptied his glass in one swallow.

‘I’ve written your dismissal papers,’ Møller said.

Harry refilled his glass.

‘They’re on the Chief’s desk. All that’s missing is his signature. Do you understand what that means, Harry?’

Harry nodded. ‘Sure you won’t have a little snifter before you go, boss?’

Møller got up. He paused by the sitting-room door.

‘You have no idea how much it hurts me to see you like this, Harry. Rakel and your work were everything you had. First of all you spat on Rakel, and now you’re spitting on your job.’

I spat on both exactly four weeks ago, Harry declared roundly in his thoughts.

‘I’m really sorry, Harry.’

Møller closed the door gently behind him as he left.

Three-quarters of an hour later Harry was asleep in the chair. He had been visited. Not by his three regular women, but by the head of
Kripos.
Four weeks and three days ago, to be precise.

The Chief Superintendent himself had asked to meet at the Boxer, a bar for the exuberantly thirsty a stone’s throw from Police HQ and a few teetering steps from the gutter. Just him, Harry and Roy Kvinsvik. He explained to Harry that as long as no official decision had been taken it was best to do everything as unofficially as possible so that he had room for manoeuvre.

He didn’t say anything about Harry’s room for manoeuvre.

When Harry arrived at the Boxer a quarter of an hour later than they had agreed the Chief Superintendent was sitting at a table at the back of the bar with a beer. Harry could feel his eyes on him as he sat down, his blue eyes shining in their deep sockets on either side of his thin, imperious nose. He had thick, grey hair, an upright posture and he was slim for his age. The Chief was like one of those 60-year-olds you could never really imagine ever having been young. Or ever really being old. In Crime Squad they called him the President because his office was oval and also because he – particularly on public occasions – talked like one. But this was ‘as unofficial as possible’. The Chief Superintendent’s lipless mouth opened.

‘You’ve come on your own.’

Harry ordered a Farris mineral water from the waitress, picked up the menu lying on the table, studied the front page and remarked casually as if it were redundant information:

‘He’s changed his mind.’

‘Your witness has changed his mind?’

‘Yes.’

The head of
Kripos
sipped his beer.

‘For five months he said that he would appear as a witness,’ Harry said. ‘The last time was the day before yesterday. Do you think the knuckle of pork is good?’

‘What did he say?’

‘We agreed that I would meet him after the Philadelphia meeting today. When I turned up he said that he’d changed his mind and that he’d come to the conclusion that it wasn’t Tom Waaler he’d seen in the car with Sverre Olsen anyway.’

The Chief Superintendent fixed Harry with a straight look. Then he pushed up his coat sleeve and checked his watch, a movement which Harry took to mean that the meeting was concluded.

‘Then we have no choice but to assume that it was someone else your witness saw and not Tom Waaler. Or what do you think?’

Harry swallowed. And swallowed again. He stared at the menu.

‘Knuckle of pork. I think pork.’

‘By all means. I have to be running along, but put it on my bill.’

Harry gave a brief laugh. ‘Very nice of you, sir, but to be honest I have a horrible feeling that I’m going to be left paying the bill anyway.’

The Chief Superintendent frowned and when he spoke there was a quiver of irritation in his voice.

‘May I be absolutely frank, Hole? It is well known that you and Inspector Waaler cannot stand the sight of each other. From the very moment you came to me with these wild accusations I have suspected that you have allowed your personal antipathies to colour your judgment. From where I am sitting, I have just had this suspicion confirmed.’

The Chief Superintendent pushed his unfinished glass of beer away from the edge of the table, stood up and buttoned his coat.

‘May I therefore be concise and I hope clear, Hole. Ellen Gjelten’s murder has been cleared up and the case is hereby closed. Neither you nor anyone else has successfully presented anything new that is substantial enough to warrant further investigation. If you so much as touch the case again it will be interpreted as countermanding orders and your dismissal papers signed by myself will be sent to the Police Appointments Committee forthwith. I am not saying this because I want to turn a blind eye to corrupt policemen, but because it is my responsibility to maintain the morale of the police force at a reasonable level. So we cannot have policemen crying wolf for no reason. Should I discover that you have made the slightest attempt to proceed with your charges against Inspector Waaler, you will be suspended with immediate effect and the case will be put before
SEFO
.’

‘Which case?’ Harry asked in a low voice. ‘Waaler versus Gjelten?’

‘Hole versus Waaler.’

When the Chief Superintendent had left, Harry sat staring at the half-empty glass of beer. He could do exactly what the head of
Kripos
said, but it would not change a thing. He was finished whatever happened. He had failed and now he had become a risk to the force. A paranoid traitor, a ticking bomb, they would get rid of him at the earliest opportunity. It was simply up to Harry to supply them with that opportunity.

The waitress arrived with the bottle of Farris water and asked him if he wanted anything to eat. Or to drink. Harry moistened his lips as his thoughts collided into one another. It was simply up to Harry to provide them with an opportunity; others would take care of the rest.

He pushed the bottle of Farris to the side and answered the waitress. That was four weeks and three days ago, and that was when it had all started. And finished.

Part Two

8

Tuesday and Wednesday.

Chow Chow.

On Tuesday the temperature in Oslo rose to 29 degrees in the shade and by three o’clock, office workers were already making for the beaches in Huk and Hvervenbukta. The tourists were flocking to open-air restaurants in Aker Brygge and in Frogner Park where, covered in sweat, they snapped obligatory pictures of the Monolith before drifting down to the Fountain in the hope that a breath of wind would send a cooling mist of fine droplets over them.

Off the tourists’ beaten track it was quiet, and what little life there was moved in slow motion. Roadworkers, their torsos bared, leaned over their machines, bricklayers on scaffolding at the building site around the Rikshospital peered down over deserted streets and taxi drivers found places to park in the shade, where they stood in groups discussing the murder in Ullevålsveien. Only in Akersgata were there signs of increased activity. The sensation-seeking rags had released the silly-season news and were greedily milking the latest killing. With many of their colleagues on holiday, the editors were putting everyone to work on the story, from journalism students doing summer jobs to unemployed political commentators. Only the cultural correspondents escaped.

It was still quieter than usual. It may have been because
Aftenposten
had moved from its position in Akersgata, the street the press traditionally occupied, down towards the centre, to the Post House,
Aftenposten
House or Post Giro Building. Whatever you called it, it was an unlovely small-town version of a skyscraper pointing up into a blue, cloudless sky. The golden-brown colossus at the top edge of the building site in Bjørvika had been smartened up, but for the time being crime reporter Roger Gjendem had only a view of Plata, the junkies’ market square, and their outdoor shooting gallery behind the sheds where they hoped to meet their brave new world. He occasionally caught himself looking to see if Thomas was down there. But Thomas was in Ullersmo prison serving a sentence for attempting to break into a policeman’s flat last winter. How crazy can you get? Or how desperate? At any rate, Roger would not have to worry that he would suddenly be looking down on his little brother shooting an overdose into his arm.

Aftenposten
had not formally appointed a new crime editor. The last one had been offered a financial pay-off as part of downsizing and had accepted it with alacrity and left. Crime was then simply placed under the news coverage umbrella and, in practice, that meant that Roger Gjendem had to step in as the crime editor, but was paid the basic journalist’s salary. He sat behind his desk with his fingers on the keyboard, his eyes on the smiling face of the woman he had scanned in as his screensaver and his mind on the woman who had packed her bags for the third time and left him and his flat in Seilduksgata. He knew that Devi would not come back this time and that it was time to move on. He went into the control panel on his computer and deleted the screensaver. That was a start. He had been working on a heroin case, but he had put it aside. Good, he hated writing about drugs. Devi insisted that it was because of Thomas. Roger tried to shut out both Devi and his little brother so that he could concentrate on the case he was supposed to be writing about.

He was summarising the details of the murder story in Ullevålsveien, enjoying some respite while they were waiting for developments, new evidence or a suspect or two. This would be an easy job. It was a sexy case in every way, with most of the ingredients that any crime reporter could wish for. A young woman of 23, single, shot in the shower room of her own flat, in broad daylight one Friday. The handgun found in the rubbish bin in the flat turns out to be the murder weapon. None of the neighbours has seen anything, no strangers have been observed roaming the area and just one of the neighbours claims to have heard something that could have been a shot. Since there are no signs of a break-in, the police are working on the theory that Camilla Loen let the killer in herself, but there is no-one in her circle of friends and acquaintances who stands out as suspicious and they all have more or less watertight alibis. The fact that Camilla Loen left her work as a graphic designer at Leo Burnett’s at 4.15 to meet two friends in front of Kunstnernes Hus at 6.00 makes it highly unlikely that she would have invited anyone home. It is equally unlikely that anyone would have rung Camilla Loen’s doorbell and sneaked into the apartment block using a false identity as she would have seen them on the video camera at the intercom panel at the entrance.

It was bad enough that the news desk could publish headlines like ‘Psycho Murder’ and ‘Neighbour Tasted Blood’, but two further details leaked out which gave the front pages two more splashes: ‘Camilla Loen’s Finger Severed’ and ‘Red Diamond Star Found Under Eyelid’.