The man had hidden himself behind a copy of Liberal.
Harry picked up a Se og Hor gossip rag with a picture of Lene Galtung and her fiance and left.
Olav Hole was lying with his eyes closed. Harry bent down and put his ear to Olav’s mouth. He was breathing so lightly it was barely audible, but Harry felt a current of air on his cheek.
He sat for a while on the chair beside the bed watching his father as his mind played back poorly edited childhood memories in arbitrary order and with no other central theme than that they were things he remembered clearly.
Then he placed the chair by the door, which he opened a crack, and waited.
It was half an hour before he saw the man come from the waiting area and walk down the corridor. Harry noticed that the squat, robustlooking man was unusually bow-legged; he seemed to be walking with a beach ball stuck between his knees. Before entering a door marked with the international sign for the men’s toilet, he plucked at his belt. As if something heavy was hanging from it.
Harry got up and followed.
Stopped outside the toilet and breathed in. It had been a long time. Then he pushed open the door and slipped in.
The toilet was like the whole hospital: clean, nice, new and too big. Along the main wall there were six cubicle doors, none with a red square above the lock. On the shorter wall four basins, and on the other long wall four porcelain urinals at hip height. The man was standing at a urinal, with his back to Harry. On the wall above him ran a horizontal pipe. It looked solid. Solid enough. Harry took out his revolver and handcuffs. International etiquette in men’s toilets is not to look at each other. Eye contact, even unintentional, is cause for murder. Accordingly, the man didn’t turn to look at Harry. Not when Harry locked the outside door with infinite care, not when he walked over slowly and not when he placed the gun barrel against the roll of fat between the man’s neck and head and whispered what a colleague used to claim all police officers should be allowed to say at least once in their careers: ‘Freeze.’
The man did exactly that. Harry could see the gooseflesh appear on the roll of fat as the man stiffened.
‘Hands up.’
The man lifted a couple of short, powerful arms above his head. Harry leaned forward. And realised at that moment it had been a blunder. The man’s speed was breathtaking. Harry knew from the hours spent swotting up on hand-to-hand combat techniques that knowing how to take a beating was as important as giving one. The art was to let your muscles relax, to appreciate that punishment cannot be avoided, only reduced. So, when the man spun round, with his knee raised, as supple as a dancer, Harry reacted by following the movement. He moved his body in the same direction as the kick. The foot hit him above the hip. Harry lost balance, fell and slid along the tiled floor until he was out of range. He remained there, sighed and looked at the ceiling as he took out his pack of cigarettes. He poked one in his mouth.
‘Speed-cuffing,’ Harry said. ‘Learned it the year I did an FBI course in Chicago. Cabrini Green, digs were the pits. For a white man, there was nothing to do in the evenings unless you wanted to go out and get yourself robbed. So I sat indoors practising two things. Loading and unloading my service pistol as fast as I could in the dark. And speed-cuffing on a table leg.’
Harry levered himself up onto his elbows.
The man was still standing with his short arms stretched up above his head. His wrists were shackled to the handcuffs on either side of the pipe. He stared blankly at Harry.
‘Mr Kluit send you?’ Harry asked, in English.
The man held Harry’s gaze without blinking.
‘The Triad? I’ve paid my debts, haven’t you heard?’ Harry studied the man’s expressionless face. The features could have been Asian, but he didn’t have a Chinese face or complexion. Mongolian maybe? ‘So what do you want from me?’
No answer. Which was bad news, as the man had most probably not come to ask for anything, but to do something.
Harry stood up and walked in a semicircle so that he could approach him from the side. He held the revolver to the man’s temple while slipping his left hand inside the man’s suit jacket. His hand ran over the cold steel of a weapon, then found a wallet and plucked it out.
Harry stepped back three paces.
‘Let’s see… Mr Jussi Kolkka.’ Harry held an American Express card up to the light. ‘Finnish? I suppose you know some Norwegian then?’
No answer.
‘You’ve been a policeman, haven’t you. When I saw you in arrivals at Gardemoen, I thought you were an undercover narco cop. How did you know I was catching that particular flight, Jussi? It’s alright if I call you Jussi, isn’t it? It feels sort of natural to address a guy with his schlong hanging out by his first name.’
There was a brief throaty noise before a gobbet of spit came whirling through the air, rotating on its axis, and landed on Harry’s chest.
Harry looked down at his T-shirt. The black snus-spit had drawn a diagonal line through the second ‘o’ and it now read ‘Snow Patrol’.
‘So you do understand Norwegian,’ Harry said. ‘Who do you work for then, Jussi? And what do you want?’
Not a muscle stirred in Jussi’s face. Someone shook the door handle outside, swore and went away.
Harry sighed. Then he raised his revolver until it was level with the Finn’s forehead and cocked it.
‘You might suppose, Jussi, that I’m a normal, sane person. Well, this is how sane I am. My father is lying helpless in his sickbed in there. You’ve found out, and that presents me with a problem. There’s only one way to solve it. Fortunately, you’re armed so I can tell the police it was self-defence.’
Harry pressed the hammer back still further. And felt the familiar nausea.
‘Kripos.’
Harry stopped the hammer. ‘Repeat.’
‘I’m in Kripos,’ he hissed in Swedish, with the Finnish accent of which witty speech-makers at Norwegian wedding receptions are so fond.
Harry stared at the man. He didn’t have a second’s doubt that he was telling the truth. Yet it was totally incomprehensible.
‘In my wallet,’ the Finn snarled, not letting the fury in his voice reach his eyes.
Harry opened the wallet and checked inside. Removed a laminated ID card. There wasn’t much information, but it was adequate. The man in front of Harry was employed by Krimpolitisentralen, Kripos for short, the central crime unit in Oslo that assisted in – and usually led – the investigations into murder cases affecting the whole of the country.
‘What the hell does Kripos want with me?’
‘Ask Bellman.’
‘Who’s Bellman?’
The Finn uttered a brief sound; it was difficult to determine whether it was a cough or laughter. ‘POB Bellman, you poor sod. My chief. Let me go now, handsome.’
‘Fuck,’ Harry said, inspecting the card again. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ He dropped the wallet on the floor and made for the door.
‘Hey! Hey!’
The Finn’s shouts faded as the door slid to behind Harry and he walked down the corridor to the exit. The nurse who had been with his father was coming from the opposite direction and nodded with a smile when they were close enough. Harry tossed the tiny key for the handcuffs up in the air.
‘There’s a flasher in the boys’ room, Altman.’
Out of instinct, the nurse caught the key with both hands. Harry could feel the open-mouthed stare on his back until he was out of the door.
9
