Nilsen picked up the folded list at the bottom of the drawer, fiddled around with his glasses and looked at the sheet. ‘There was a mobile phone, but they took it. Probably wanted to see if he had rung the victim.’
‘Mm,’ Harry said. ‘Anything else?’
‘What else should there be?’ Nilsen said, skimming the sheet. And concluded he had checked everything. ‘Nope.’
‘Thanks, that was all. Thanks for your help, Nilsen.’
Nilsen nodded slowly. Still wearing his glasses. ‘Keys.’
‘Yes, right.’ Harry put them back in the drawer. Watched Nilsen making sure there were still two.
Harry left, crossed the car park and went into Akebergveien. Continued down to Toyen and Urtegata. Little Karachi. Small greengrocers, hijabs and old men on plastic chairs outside their cafes. And to the Watchtower, the Salvation Army cafe for the town’s down-and-outs. Harry knew that on days like today it would be quiet, but as soon as winter and the cold came they would be flocking round the tables. Coffee and freshly made sandwiches. A set of clean clothes, the previous year’s fashion, blue trainers from the army surplus store. In the sickroom on the first floor: attend to the latest wounds from the narcotic battlefields or — if the situation was dire — a vitamin B injection. Harry considered for a moment whether to drop in on Martine. Perhaps she was still working there. A poet had once written that after the great love there were minor ones. She had been one of the minor ones. But that was not the reason. Oslo was not big, and the heavy users gathered either here or at the Mission Cafe in Skippergata. It was not improbable that she had known Gusto Hanssen. And Oleg.
However, Harry decided to take things in the right order, and started to walk again. Passed the Akerselva. He looked down from the bridge. The brown water Harry remembered from his childhood was as pure as a mountain stream. It was said you could catch trout in it now. There they were, on the paths either side of the river: the dope dealers. Everything was new. Everything was the same.
He went up Hausmanns gate. Passed Jakobskirke. Followed the house numbers. A sign for the Theatre of Cruelty. A graffiti-covered door with a smiley. A burnt-down house, open, cleared. And there it was. A typical Oslo tenement building, built in the 1800s, pale, sober, four storeys. Harry pushed the front door, which opened. Not locked. It led straight to the stairway. Which smelt of piss and refuse.
Harry noted the coded tagging on the way up the floors. Loose banisters. Doors bearing the scars of smashed locks with newer, stronger and additional ones in place. On the second floor he stopped and knew he had found the crime scene. Orange-and-white tape criss-crossing the door.
He put his hand into his pocket and took out the two keys he had removed from Oleg’s key ring while Nilsen was reading the checklist. Harry wasn’t sure which of his own keys he had used to replace them, but Hong Kong was not, after all, the hardest place to have new ones made.
One key was an Abus, which Harry knew was a padlock since he had once bought one himself. But the other was a Ving. He inserted it in the lock. It went half in, then stopped. He pushed harder. Tried twisting.
‘Shit.’
He took out his mobile phone. Her number was listed in his contacts as B. As there were only eight names stored, one letter was enough.
‘Lonn.’
What Harry liked best about Beate Lonn, apart from the fact that she was one of the two best forensics officers he had worked with, was that she always reduced information to the basics, and that — like Harry — she never weighed a case down with superfluous words.
‘Hi, Beate. I’m in Hausmanns gate.’
‘The crime scene? What are you doing…?’
‘I can’t get in. Have you got the key?’
‘Have I got the key?’
‘You’re in charge of the whole shebang up there, aren’t you?’
‘Course I’ve got the key. But I’ve no intention of giving it to you.’
‘Course not. But there are a couple of things you’ve got to double-check at the crime scene, aren’t there? I remember something about a guru saying that in murder cases a forensics officer can never be thorough enough.’
‘So you remember that, do you.’
‘It was the first thing she said to all her trainees. I suppose I can join you and see how you work.’
‘Harry…’
‘I won’t touch anything.’
Silence. Harry knew he was exploiting her. She was more than a colleague, she was a friend, but most important of all: she was herself a mother.
She sighed. ‘Give me twenty.’
Saying ‘minutes’ for her was superfluous.
Saying thank you for him was superfluous. So Harry rang off.
Officer Truls Berntsen walked slowly through the corridors of Orgkrim. Because it was his experience that the slower his steps the faster time went. And if there was anything he had enough of it was time. Awaiting him in the office was a worn chair and a small desk with a pile of reports that were there mostly for appearances’ sake. A computer he used mostly for surfing, but even that had become boring after there had been a crackdown on which websites they could visit. And since he worked with narc and not sexual offences he could soon find himself having to give an explanation. Officer Berntsen carried the brimful cup of coffee through the door to the desk. Paid attention not to spill it on the brochure for the new Audi Q5. 218 horsepower. SUV, but not a Paki car. Bandit car. Left the Volvo V70 patrol car standing. A car that showed you were someone. Showed her, she of the new house in Hoyenhall, that you were someone. Not a nobody.
Keeping the status quo. That was the focus now. We’ve achieved definite gains, Mikael had said at the general meeting on Monday. Which meant: make sure no one new gets their oar in. ‘We can always wish there were even fewer narcotics on the streets. But having achieved so much in such a short time there is always the danger of a relapse. Remember Hitler and Moscow. We shouldn’t bite off more than we can chew.’
Officer Berntsen knew in rough terms what that meant. Long days with your feet on the desk.
Sometimes he longed to be back at Kripos. Murder was not like narc, it wasn’t politics, it was just solving a case, period. But Mikael Bellman himself had insisted Truls should accompany him from Bryn to Police HQ, said he needed allies down there in enemy territory, someone he could trust, someone who could cover his flank if he was attacked. Said it without saying it: the way Mikael had covered Truls’s flank. As in the recent case of the boy on remand with whom Truls had been a bit heavy-handed and who, so terribly unfortunate, had received an injury to the face. Mikael had given Truls a bollocking, of course, said he hated police violence, didn’t want to see it in his department, said that now, alas, it was his responsibility as boss to report Truls to the police lawyer, then she would assess whether it should go further to the Special Unit. But the boy’s eyesight had returned to almost normal, Mikael had dealt with the boy’s solicitor, the charge of possessing drugs had been dropped, and nothing happened after that.
The same as nothing happened here.
Long days with feet on the desk.
And that was where Truls was about to put them — as he did at least ten times a day — when he looked out onto Bots Park and the old linden tree in the middle of the avenue leading up to the prison.
It had been put up.
The red poster.
He felt his skin tingle, his pulse rise. And his mood.
In a flash he was up, his jacket was on and his coffee abandoned.
Gamlebyen Church was a brisk eight-minute walk from Police HQ. Truls Berntsen walked down Oslo gate to Minne Park, left over Dyvekes Bridge and he was in the heart of Oslo, where the town had originated. The church was unadorned to the point of appearing poor, without any of the trite ornaments on the new Romantic church by Police HQ. But Gamlebyen Church had a more exciting history. At least if half of what his grandmother had told him during his childhood in Manglerud was true. The Berntsen family had moved from a dilapidated city-centre block to the satellite town of Manglerud when it was constructed at the end of the 1950s. But, strangely enough, it was them — the genuine Oslo family with Berntsen workers spanning three generations — who felt like immigrants. For most people in the satellite towns were farmers or people who came to town from far away to create a new life.
