Beate coughed and repeated: ‘Mikael Bellman.’
‘Bellman?’
‘Yes.’
‘Gusto had Mikael Bellman’s blood under his nails when he died?’
‘Looks like it.’
Harry leaned back. This changed everything. Or did it? It didn’t need to have anything to do with the killing. But it had something to do with something. Something which Bellman had not wanted to talk about.
‘Get out,’ Bellman said with the kind of voice that isn’t loud because it doesn’t need to be.
‘So it’s you two, is it?’ I said. ‘I thought it was Truls Berntsen she had hired. Smart to go higher, Isabelle. What’s the set-up? Is Berntsen just along as your slave, Mikael?’
I caressed rather than pronounced his first name. That was after all how we had introduced ourselves on his land that day, Gusto and Mikael. Like two boys, two potential play pals. I saw how it seemed to light something in his eyes, made them flare up. Bellman was quite naked; perhaps that was why I imagined he would not attack. He was too quick for me. He was on me and had my head in a vice.
‘Let go!’
He pulled me to the top of the stairs. My nose was squeezed between his chest and armpit and I could smell both of them. And this was a thought that lodged itself in my brain: if he wanted me to get out why haul me up the stairs? I couldn’t punch my way free, so I dug my nails in his chest and dragged my hands like claws towards me, felt one nail catch on his nipple. He swore and slackened his grip. I slipped out of the vice and jumped. Landed halfway down the stairs, but managed to stay on my feet. Charged down the hall, grabbed her car keys and ran into the yard. Course, the car wasn’t locked either. The wheels churned up the gravel as I released the clutch. In the mirror I saw Mikael Bellman come running out of the door. Saw something glint in his hand. Then the wheels bit, I was thrust back against the seat and the car shot across the yard and onto the road.
‘It was Bellman who took Truls Berntsen along to Orgkrim,’ Harry said. ‘Is it conceivable that Berntsen is doing the burner jobs under Bellman’s instructions?’
‘You’re aware of what we’re moving into here, Harry?’
‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘And from now on you don’t have anything to do with it, Beate.’
‘Try bloody stopping me!’ The phone diaphragm crackled. Harry couldn’t remember Beate Lonn ever swearing before. ‘This is my police force, Harry. I don’t want people like Berntsen dragging it down into the dirt.’
‘OK,’ Harry said. ‘But let’s not draw any hasty conclusions. The only evidence we have is that Bellman met Gusto. We don’t even have anything concrete on Truls Berntsen yet.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to start somewhere else. And if it’s what I hope it is, the pieces will topple against each other like dominoes. The problem is staying free long enough to launch the plan.’
‘Do you mean to say you have a plan?’
‘Of course I have a plan.’
‘A good plan?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘But a plan?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘You’re lying, aren’t you?’
‘Not half.’
I was racing into Oslo on the E18 when I realised how deep the mess I had landed myself in was.
Bellman had tried to drag me upstairs. To the bedroom. Where he had the pistol he chased me with. He was willing to fricking liquidate me to keep my mouth shut. Which could only mean he was up to his knees in shit. So, what would he do now? Get me busted of course. For stealing a car, drug dealing, not paying the hotel bill, there was quite a selection. Put me behind bars before I could blab to anyone. And as soon as I was banged up and gagged, there was little doubt about what would happen: they would make it look either like suicide or like another inmate had nobbled me. So the stupidest thing I could do would be to drive around in this car that they probably already had on their radar. So I put my foot down. The place I was going was on the east of town, and I could avoid going through the centre. I drove up the hill, headed for the quiet residential areas. Parked some distance away and started walking.
The sun had appeared again, and people were out and about, pushing prams, with disposable barbecues in those net bags hanging from the handles. Grinning at the sun as if it were happiness itself.
I chucked the car keys into a garden and walked up to the flats.
Found the name on the doorbell and rang.
‘It’s me,’ I said when he eventually answered.
‘I’m a bit busy,’ said the voice in the intercom.
‘And I’m a drug addict,’ I said. It was meant as a joke, but I felt the impact of the words. Oleg thought it was funny when for a laugh I occasionally asked punters whether perhaps they were suffering from drug addiction and wanted some violin.
‘What do you want?’ the voice asked.
‘I want some violin.’
The punters’ line had become mine.
Pause.
‘Haven’t got any. Run out. No base to make any more.’
‘Base?’
‘Levorphanol base. Do you want the formula as well?’
I knew it was the truth, but he had to have some. Had to. I pondered. I couldn’t go to the rehearsal room, they were bound to be waiting for me. Oleg. Good old Oleg would let me in.
‘You’ve got two hours, Ibsen. If you haven’t come to Hausmanns gate with four quarters I’ll go straight to the cops and tell all. There’s nothing for me to lose any more. Do you understand? Hausmanns gate 92. You go straight in and it’s on the second floor.’
I tried to imagine his face. Terrified, sweating. The poor old perv.
‘Fine,’ he said.
That was the way. You just have to make them understand the gravity of the situation.
Harry was swallowing the rest of his coffee and staring into the street. Time to move on.
On his way across Youngstorget to the kebab shops in Torggata he received a call.
It was Klaus Torkildsen.
‘Good news,’ he said.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘At the time in question Truls Berntsen’s phone was registered at four of the base stations in Oslo city centre, and that locates his position in the same area as Hausmanns gate 92.’
‘How big is the area we’re talking about?’
‘Erm, a kind of hexagonal area with a diameter of eight hundred metres.’
‘OK,’ Harry said, absorbing the information. ‘What about the other guy?’
‘I couldn’t find anything in his name exactly, but he had a company phone registered at the Radium Hospital.’
‘And?’
‘And, as I said, it’s good news. That phone was in the same area at the same time.’
‘Mm.’ Harry entered a door, walked past three occupied tables and stopped in front of a counter on which was displayed a selection of unnaturally bright kebabs. ‘Have you got his address?’
Klaus Torkildsen read it out, and Harry jotted it down on a serviette.
‘Have you got another number for that address?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I was wondering if he had a wife or a partner.’
Harry heard Torkildsen typing on a keyboard. Then came the answer: ‘No. No one else with that address.’
