‘Botsen,’ Harry said. ‘On remand.’
‘For the moment.’
‘Visits out of bounds?’
‘Who traced you in Hong Kong and told you about the case? Was it-?’
‘No,’ Harry interrupted.
‘So?’
‘So.’
‘Who?’
‘I might have read about it on the Net.’
‘Hardly,’ Hagen said with a thin smile and lifeless eyes. ‘The case was in the papers for one day before it was forgotten. And there were no names. Only an article about a drugged-up junkie who had shot another junkie over dope. Nothing of any interest for anyone. Nothing to make the case stand out.’
‘Apart from the fact that the two junkies were teenage boys,’ Harry said. ‘Nineteen years old. And eighteen.’ His voice had changed timbre.
Hagen shrugged. ‘Old enough to kill, old enough to die. In the new year they would have been called up for military service.’
‘Could you fix up a chat for me?’
‘Who told you, Harry?’
Harry rubbed his chin. ‘Friend in Krimteknisk.’
Hagen smiled. And this time the smile reached his eyes. ‘You’re so damned kind, Harry. To my knowledge, you have three friends in the police force. Among them Bjorn Holm in Krimteknisk. And Beate Lonn in Krimteknisk. So which one was it?’
‘Beate. Will you fix me up with a visit?’
Hagen sat on the edge of his desk and observed Harry. Looked down at the telephone.
‘On one condition, Harry. You promise to keep miles away from this case. It’s all sunshine and roses between us and Kripos now, and I could do without any more trouble with them.’
Harry grimaced. He had sunk so low in the chair now he could study his belt buckle. ‘So you and the Kripos king have become bosom pals?’
‘Mikael Bellman stopped working for Kripos,’ Hagen said. ‘Hence, sunshine and roses.’
‘Got rid of the psychopath? Happy days…’
‘On the contrary.’ Hagen’s laugh was hollow. ‘Bellman is more present than ever. He’s in this building.’
‘Oh shit. Here in Crime Squad?’
‘God forbid. He’s been running Orgkrim for more than a year.’
‘You’ve got new wombos, I can hear.’
‘Organised crime. They merged a load of the old sections. Burglary, trafficking, narc. It’s all Orgkrim now. More than two hundred employees, biggest unit in the Crime Department.’
‘Mm. More than he had in Kripos.’
‘Yet his salary went down. And you know what that means when people take lower paid jobs?’
‘They’re after more power,’ Harry said.
‘He was the one who got the drugs market under control, Harry. Good undercover work. Arrests and raids. There are fewer gangs and there’s no in-fighting now. OD figures are, as I said, on the way down
…’ Hagen pointed a finger at the ceiling. ‘And Bellman’s on the way up. The boy’s going places, Harry.’
‘Me too,’ Harry said, rising to his feet. ‘To Botsen. I’m counting on there being a visitor’s permit in reception by the time I arrive.’
‘If we’ve got a deal?’
‘Course we have,’ Harry said, grabbing his ex-boss’s outstretched hand. He pumped it twice and made for the door. Hong Kong had been a good school for lying. He heard Hagen lift the telephone receiver, but as he reached the threshold he turned nonetheless.
‘Who’s the third?’
‘What?’ Hagen was looking down at the keypad while tapping with a heavy finger.
‘The third friend I have in the force?’
Unit Head Gunnar Hagen put the receiver to his ear, sent Harry a weary look and said with a sigh: ‘Who do you think?’ And: ‘Hello? Hagen here. I’d like a visitor’s permit… Yes?’ Hagen laid a hand over the receiver. ‘No problem. They’re eating now, but get there for around twelve.’
Harry smiled, mouthed a thank-you and closed the door quietly after him.
Tord Schultz stood in the booth, buttoning up his trousers and putting on his jacket. They had stopped short of examining orifices. The customs official — the one who had stopped him — was waiting outside. Standing there like an external examiner after a viva.
‘Thank you for being so cooperative,’ she said, indicating the exit.
Tord guessed they’d had long discussions about whether they would say ‘we’re sorry’ whenever a sniffer dog had identified someone, but no dope was found. The individual stopped, delayed, suspected and shamed would undoubtedly consider an apology appropriate. But should you complain about someone doing their job? Dogs identified innocent people all the time, and a complaint would be a partial admission that there was a flaw in the procedure, a failure in the system. On the other hand, they could see by his stripes that he was a captain. Not a three-striper, not one of the failed fifty-year-olds who had stayed in the right-hand seat as a first officer because they had messed up their career. No, he had four stripes, which showed that he had order, control; he was a man who was a master of the situation and his own life. Showed that he belonged to the airport’s Brahmin caste. A captain was a person who ought to welcome a complaint from a customs official, whether it was appropriate or not.
‘Not at all, it’s good to know someone is on the mark,’ Tord said, looking for his bag. In the worst-case scenario they had searched it; the dog hadn’t detected anything there. And the metal plates around the space where the package was hidden were still impenetrable for existing X-rays.
‘It’ll be here soon,’ she said.
There were a couple of seconds when they silently regarded each other.
Divorced, Tord thought.
At that moment another official appeared.
‘Your bag…’ he said.
Tord looked at him. Saw it in his eyes. Felt a lump grow in his stomach, rise, nudge his oesophagus. How? How?
‘We took out everything and weighed it,’ he said. ‘An empty twenty-six-inch’ Samsonite Aspire GRT weighs 5.8 kilos. Yours weighs 6.3. Would you mind explaining why?’
The official was too professional to smile overtly, but Tord Schultz still saw the triumph shining in his face. The official leaned forward a fraction, lowered his voice. ‘… or shall we?’
Harry went into the street after eating at Olympen. The old, slightly dissipated hostelry he remembered had been renovated into an expensive Oslo West version of an Oslo East place, with large paintings of the town’s old working-class district. It wasn’t that it wasn’t attractive, with the chandeliers and everything. Even the mackerel had been good. It just wasn’t… Olympen.
He lit a cigarette and crossed Bots Park between Police HQ and the prison’s old, grey walls. He passed a man putting a tatty red poster on a tree and banging a staple gun against the bark of the ancient, and protected, linden. He didn’t seem to be aware of the fact that he was committing a serious offence in full view of all the windows at the front of the building which contained the biggest collection of police officers in Norway. Harry paused for a moment. Not to stop the crime, but to see the poster. It advertised a concert with Russian Amcar Club at Sardines. Harry could remember the long-dissolved band and the derelict club. Olympen. Harry Hole. This was clearly the year for the resurrection of the dead. He was about to move on when he heard a tremulous voice behind him.
‘Got’ny violin?’
Harry turned. The man behind him was wearing a new, clean G-Star jacket. He stooped forward as though there were a strong wind at his back, and he had the unmistakable bowed heroin knees. Harry was going to reply
