A phone was picked up.
‘Hello?’
‘This is Torkildsen at Telenor. Who am I talking to?’
‘Never mind about that, Torkildsen. What have you got for us?’
Torkildsen could feel his sweaty upper arms sticking to his chest.
‘I’ve done a bit of checking around,’ he said. ‘Hole’s mobile is constantly on the move and impossible to trace. But there is another mobile which has rung the internal number in Kjolberggata several times.’
‘Right. Whose is it?’
‘The subscription is under the name of Oystein Eikeland. His profession is given as taxi driver.’
‘So?’
Torkildsen pushed out his lower lip and tried to blow hot air upwards to clear his glasses, which were wet with condensation.
‘I was just thinking that there could be a connection between a telephone that is continually on the move all over town and a taxi driver.’
The line went quiet at the other end.
‘Hello?’ Torkildsen said.
‘Received and understood,’ the voice said. ‘Keep tracing the numbers, Torkildsen.’
As Bjorn Holm and Beate wandered into reception in Kjolberggata, Beate’s mobile phone bleeped.
She whipped it out of her belt, read the display and placed it against her ear in one sweeping movement.
‘Harry? Ask Sivertsen to roll up his left trouser leg. We’ve got a picture of a masked cyclist in front of the Fountain at half past five last Monday with a plaster on his knee. And he’s holding a brown polythene bag.’
Bjorn had to take longer strides to keep up with his diminutive female colleague as she made her way down the corridor. He heard a voice crackling on the phone.
Beate swung into her office.
‘No plaster and no wound? No, I know that doesn’t prove anything, but for your information Andre Clausen has more or less identified the cyclist in the picture as the same person he saw at Halle, Thune and Wetterlid.’
She sat down behind her desk.
‘What?’
Bjorn Holm saw three deep sergeant’s chevrons appear on her forehead.
‘Right.’
She put down the phone and stared at it as if she didn’t know whether to believe what she had just heard.
‘Harry thinks he knows who the Courier Killer is,’ she said.
Bjorn didn’t answer.
‘Check to see if the lab is free,’ she said. ‘He’s given us a new job.’
‘What kind of job?’ Bjorn asked.
‘A real shit job.’
Oystein Eikeland was sitting in a taxi in the parking area below St Hanshaugen with his eyes half closed, peering down the street at a girl with long legs, imbibing caffeine on a seat on the pavement outside Java. The hum of the air conditioning was drowned out by the sounds of music the loudspeakers were emitting.
Malicious rumour had it that the song was a Gram Parsons number and that Keith and the Stones had nicked it for the Sticky Fingers album while they were down in France. The ’60s were over and they were trying to drug themselves into creativity: ‘Wild Horses’.
One of the back doors opened. Oystein was startled. Whoever it was must have come from behind, from the park. In the mirror he saw a tanned face with a powerful jaw and reflector sunglasses.
‘Lake Maridal, driver.’ The voice was soft, but the command intonation was unmistakable. ‘If it isn’t too much trouble…’
‘Not at all,’ Oystein mumbled as he turned down the music and took a last deep drag of his cigarette before he tossed it out of the open window.
‘Whereabouts by Lake Maridal?’
‘Just drive. I’ll tell you.’
They drove down Ullevalsveien.
‘Rain is forecast,’ Oystein said.
‘I’ll tell you,’ the voice repeated.
No tip then, Oystein thought.
After a ten-minute drive they had left the residential quarter behind them and suddenly it was all fields, farms and Lake Maridal. It was such a wonderful transition that an American passenger had once asked Oystein if they were in a theme park.
‘You can take the turning up there to the left,’ the voice said.
‘Up into the woods?’ Oystein asked.
‘Right. Does that make you nervous?’
The thought had never occurred to Oystein. Until now. He looked into the mirror again, but the man had moved across to the window so that he could only see half of his face.
Oystein slowed down, indicated he was turning left and swung into the turning. The gravel track in front of them was narrow and bumpy with grass growing in the middle.
Oystein hesitated.
Branches with green leaves that reflected in the light hung over the track on each side and seemed to be waving them on. Oystein put his foot on the brake. The gravel crunched under the tyres and the car came to a halt.
‘Sorry,’ he said to the mirror. ‘Just had the chassis fixed for 40 thousand and we are under no obligation to drive on tracks like these. I can ring for another car if you like.’
The man in the back seat appeared to be smiling, at least the half he could see.
‘And which telephone were you thinking of using, Eikeland?’
Oystein felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising.
‘Your own telephone?’ the voice whispered. ‘Or Harry Hole’s?’
‘I’m not exactly sure what you’re talking about, but the trip stops here, mister.’
The man laughed.
‘ Mister? I don’t think so, Eikeland.’
Oystein felt an urge to swallow, but resisted the temptation.
‘Listen, you don’t have to pay since I couldn’t drive you to your destination. Get out and wait here and I’ll organise another car for you.’
‘Your record says that you’re smart, Eikeland. So I assume you know what I’m after. I hate to have to use this cliche, but it is up to you whether we do this the easy way or the hard way.’
‘I really don’t know what… Ow!’
The man had slapped the back of Oystein’s head, just above the headrest, and as Oystein was automatically thrust forwards, he could feel, to his surprise, his eyes filling with tears. It wasn’t that it hurt particularly. The blow had been of the type they handed out at junior school: light, a sort of introductory humiliation. The tear ducts were, however, already aware of what his brain still refused to accept. That he was in serious trouble.
‘Where’s Harry’s phone, Eikeland? In the glove compartment? In the boot? In your pocket perhaps?’
Oystein didn’t answer. He sat still as his eyes fed his brain. Forest on both sides. Something told him that the man in the back seat was fit and that he would catch Oystein in a matter of seconds. Was the man alone? Should he set off the alarm that was connected to the other cars? Was it a good idea to get other people involved?
‘I see,’ the man said. ‘The hard way then. And do you know what?’ Oystein was unable to react before he felt an arm around his neck pulling him back against the headrest. ‘Deep down, that’s what I’d hoped.’
Oystein lost his glasses. He stretched his hand out towards the steering column, but couldn’t reach.
‘Press the alarm and I’ll kill you,’ the man whispered into his ear. ‘And I’m not speaking metaphorically, Eikeland, but in the sense that I will literally take your life.’
Despite the fact that his brain was not getting oxygen, Oystein Eikeland could hear, see and smell unusually
