moment we had dealt with Albu. You should be more concerned about the outcome of the trial. My contact says the prospects don't look too rosy. I understand the father's family has certain connections?'
Harry hunched his shoulders.
Raskol pulled out the desk drawer, took the shiny Trioving system key and gave it to Harry. 'Go to the metro station in Grшnland. Go down the first set of stairs and you'll see a woman sitting behind a window by the toilets. You need five kroner to get in. Tell her Harry has arrived, go into the Gents and lock yourself in one of the cubicles. When you hear someone come in whistling 'Waltzing Matilda' it means your transport is ready. Good luck, Spiuni.'
The rain was hammering down so hard there was a fine shower rebounding off the tarmac, and if anyone had taken the time, they would have seen small rainbows in the streetlamps at the bottom of the narrow one-way section of Sofies gate. However, Bjarne Mшller didn't have time. He got out of the car, raised his coat over his head and ran across the street to the front door where Ivarsson, Weber and a man, apparently of Pakistani origin, stood waiting for him.
Mшller shook hands and the dark-skinned man introduced himself as Ali Niazi, Harry's neighbour.
'Waaler will be here as soon as he has cleared up in Slemdal,' Mшller said. 'What have you found?'
'Quite sensational things, I'm afraid,' Ivarsson said. 'The most important thing now is to work out how we're going to tell the press that one of our own police officers-'
'Whoa there,' Mшller rumbled. 'Not so fast. How about a debriefing?'
Ivarsson smiled thinly. 'Come with me.'
The Head of the Robberies Unit led the other three through a low door and down a crooked staircase into the cellar. Mшller contorted his long, thin body as well as he could to avoid touching the ceiling or walls. He didn't like cellars.
Ivarsson's voice was a dull echo between the brick walls. 'As you know, Beate Lшnn received a number of forwarded e-mails from Hole. He maintains he was sent them by a person who confessed to murdering Anna Bethsen. I've been to Police HQ and I read the e-mails an hour ago. To put it bluntly, they are for the most part confused, incomprehensible gibberish. But they do contain information which the writer could not have possessed without intimate knowledge of what went on the night Anna Bethsen died. Even though the information puts Hole in the flat that evening, it also apparently gives him an alibi.'
'Apparently?' Mшller ducked underneath another door frame. Inside, the ceiling was even lower, and he walked bent double while trying not to think that above him were four floors of building materials held together by centuries old wattle and daub. 'What do you mean, Ivarsson? Didn't you say the e-mails contained a confession?'
'First of all, we searched Hole's flat,' Ivarsson said. 'We switched on his computer and opened the mailbox and found all the e-mails he had received. Just as he had made out to Beate Lшnn. In other words, an apparent alibi.'
'I heard that,' Mшller said with obvious irritation. 'Can we get to the point quickly?'
'The point is, of course, the person who sent these e-mails to Harry's computer.'
Mшller heard voices.
'It's round that corner,' the man who introduced himself as Harry's neighbour said.
They came to a halt in front of a storeroom. Two men were crouching behind the wire mesh. One shone a torch on the back of a laptop while reading out a number, which the other noted down. Mшller saw two electric cables running from the wall socket, one to the laptop and the other to a scratched Nokia mobile phone, which in turn was connected to the laptop.
Mшller straightened up as far as he was able. 'And what does that prove?'
Ivarsson placed a hand on the shoulder of Harry's neighbour. 'Ali says he was in the cellar a few days after Anna Bethsen was killed, and that was the first time he had seen this laptop with attached mobile phone in Harry's storeroom. We've already checked the phone.'
'And?'
'It's Hole's. Now we're trying to find out who bought the laptop. We've checked the sent items, anyway.'
Mшller closed his eyes. His back was aching already.
'And there they are.' Ivarsson shook his head in vindication. 'All the e-mails Harry's trying to make us believe some mysterious murderer has sent him.'
'Hm,' Mшller said. 'That doesn't look good.'
'Weber found the real proof in the flat.'
Mшller looked at Weber for guidance, who, with a grim expression on his face, held up a small transparent plastic bag.
'A key?' Mшller said. 'Bearing the initials AA?'
'Found in the drawer of the telephone table,' Weber said. 'It matches the key to Anna Bethsen's flat.'
Mшller stared blankly at Weber. The harsh light from the naked bulb gave their faces the same deathly pale colour as the whitewashed walls and Mшller had the feeling he was in a burial vault. 'I have to get out,' he murmured.
37
Spiuni Gjerman
Harry opened his eyes and looked up into a smiling girl's face and felt the first sledgehammer blow.
He closed his eyes again, but neither the girl's laughter nor the headache disappeared.
He tried to reconstruct the night.
Raskol, the toilet in the metro station, a squat man in a worn Armani suit whistling, an outstretched hand with gold rings, black hairs and a long pointed nail on the little finger. 'Hi, Harry, I'm your friend Simon.' And in sharp contrast to the shabby suit: a shiny new Mercedes with a chauffeur who looked like Simon's brother with the same cheery, brown eyes and the same hairy, gold-bedecked handshake.
The two men in the front of the car had chatted away in a blend of Norwegian and Swedish with the curious intonation of circus people, knife-sellers, preachers and dance-band vocalists. But they hadn't said much. 'How are you, my friend?' 'Terrible weather, eh?' 'Smart clothes, my friend. Shall we swap?' Hearty laughter and flicking of a cigarette lighter. Did Harry smoke? Russian cigarettes. Take one, please, a bit rough maybe, but 'good in their way, you know'. More laughter. No one had mentioned Raskol's name or where they were going.
Which had turned out to be not too far away.
They turned off after the Munch Museum and bumped over potholes to a car park in front of a deserted, muddy football pitch. At the end of the car park were three caravans. Two large new ones and a small old one without wheels, standing on Leca blocks.
The door of one of the large caravans opened and Harry saw the silhouette of a woman. Children's heads poked out behind her. Harry counted five.
He said he wasn't hungry and sat in the corner watching them eat. The food was served by the younger of the two women in the caravan and was eaten quickly and without ceremony. The children stared at Harry as they giggled and shoved each other. Harry winked at them and tried a smile as feeling slowly returned to his stiff, numb body. Which was good news since there was two metres of it and every centimetre hurt. Afterwards Simon had given him two woollen blankets and a friendly pat on the shoulder, and nodded towards the small caravan. 'It's not the Hilton, but you're safe here, my friend.'
Any warmth Harry had left in his body disappeared immediately he entered the egg-shaped refrigerator of a caravan. He had kicked off Шystein's shoes which were at least one size too small, rubbed his feet and tried to make room for his long legs in the short bed. The last thing he remembered doing was trying to pull off his wet trousers.
'Hee-hee-hee.'
