‘No. Only that she’s left to be with him.’
Harry took another swig of coffee. ‘I know where the end of the world is,’ he said.
She didn’t answer.
‘I can go and try to bring her back for you.’
‘She doesn’t want to be brought back.’
‘I can try. With your help.’ Harry pulled out a piece of paper and placed it in front of her. ‘What do you say?’
She read. Then she looked up. The make-up had run from her turquoise eyes down her hollow cheeks.
‘Swear to me that you’ll bring my girl back safe and sound, Hole. Swear. Do that and I’ll agree.’
Harry studied her.
‘I swear,’ he said.
Outside again, with a cigarette lit, he thought about what she had said. Can a mother ever let go? About Odd Utmo who had taken a photograph of his son with him. But a daughter can let go. Can she? He blew out the cigarette smoke. Could he let go?
Gunnar Hagen was standing beside the vegetable counter of his favourite Pakistani grocer’s shop. He ogled his inspector with utter disbelief. ‘You want to go back to the Congo? To find Lene Galtung? And that has nothing to do with the murder investigation?’
‘Same as last time,’ Harry said, lifting a vegetable he didn’t recognise. ‘We’re after a missing person.’
‘Lene Galtung has not been reported missing by anyone except the gutter press, as far as I know.’
‘She has now.’ Harry took a sheet from his coat pocket and showed Hagen the signature. ‘By her biological mother.’
‘I see. And how am I going to explain to the Ministry of Justice that we should launch this search in the Congo?’
‘We have a lead.’
‘Which is?’
‘I read in Se og Hor that Lene Galtung asked to have her hair dyed brick red. I don’t even know if that’s a colour we use in Norway, that’s probably why I remembered it.’
‘Remembered what?’
‘That it was the hair colour given in the passport belonging to Juliana Verni from Leipzig. At the time I asked Gunther to check if there was a stamp from Kigali in her passport. But the police didn’t find it, the passport was gone, and I’m convinced Tony Leike took it.’
‘The passport? And?’
‘Now Lene Galtung has got it.’
Hagen put some pak choi in his shopping basket while slowly shaking his head. ‘You’re basing a trip to the Congo on something you read in a gossip rag?’
‘I’m basing it on what I – or I should say Katrine Bratt – found out about what Juliana Verni has been doing recently.’
Hagen started to make a move towards the man at the cash desk on a podium by the right-hand wall. ‘Verni’s dead, Harry.’
‘Do dead people catch flights? Turns out Juliana Verni – or let’s say a woman with curly brick-red hair – has bought a plane ticket from Zurich to the end of the world.’
‘The end of the world?’
‘Goma, the Congo. Early tomorrow.’
‘Then they will arrest her when they discover she has a passport belonging to a person who has been dead for more than two months.’
‘I checked with ICAO. They say it can take up to a year before the passport number of a deceased person is crossed off the books. Which means someone may have travelled to the Congo on Odd Utmo’s passport, too. However, we have no cooperation agreement with the Congo. And it’s hardly an insurmountable problem buying your way out of prison.’
Hagen let the cashier tot up his goods while he massaged his temples in an attempt to pre-empt the inevitable headache. ‘So go and find her in Zurich. Send the Swiss police to the airport.’
‘We’ve got her under surveillance. Lene Galtung will lead us to Tony Leike, boss.’
‘She’ll lead us to perdition, Harry.’ Hagen paid, took his items and marched out of the shop into rainy, wind- blown Gronlandsleiret where people rushed past with upturned collars and downcast faces.
‘You don’t understand. Bratt managed to find out that two days ago Lene Galtung emptied her account in Zurich. Two million euros. Not a staggering sum and definitely not enough to finance a whole mining project. But enough to bridge a critical phase.’
‘Idle speculation.’
‘What the hell else is she going to do with two million euros in cash? Come on, boss, this is the only chance we’ll get.’ Harry stepped up the pace to stay level with Hagen. ‘In the Congo you don’t find people who don’t want to be found. The fucking country is as big as Western Europe and consists largely of forest no white man has ever seen. Go for it now. Leike will haunt your dreams, boss.’
‘I don’t have nightmares like you do, Harry.’
‘Have you told the next of kin how well you sleep at night, boss?’
Gunnar Hagen came to an abrupt halt.
‘Sorry, boss,’ Harry said. ‘That was below the belt.’
‘It was. And actually I don’t know why you’re hassling me for my permission. You’ve never considered it important before.’
‘Thought it would be nice for you to have the feeling you’re the man in charge, boss.’
Hagen fired a warning shot across Harry’s bows. Harry shrugged. ‘Let me do this, boss. Afterwards you can give me the boot for refusing to obey orders. I’ll take all the flak, it’s OK by me.’
‘Is it OK?’
‘I’m going to resign after this anyway.’
Hagen eyed Harry. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Go.’ Then he set off again.
Harry caught up with him. ‘Fine?’
‘Yes. Actually it was fine from the very beginning.’
‘Oh? Why didn’t you say so before then?’
‘Thought it would be nice to have the feeling I was the man in charge.’
PART NINE
83
The End of the World
She dreamed she was standing before a closed door and heard a cold, lone bird’s cry from the forest, and it sounded so peculiar because the sun was shining and it was hot. She opened the door…
She woke up with her head on Harry’s shoulder and dried saliva in the corners of her mouth. The captain’s voice announced they were about to land in Goma.
She looked out of the window. A grey stripe in the east presaged the arrival of a new day. It was twelve hours since they had left Oslo. In a few hours the Zurich flight with Juliana Verni on the passenger list would land.
‘I’m wondering why Hagen thought it was alright to shadow Lene like this,’ Harry said.
‘He probably valued your cogent arguments,’ Kaja yawned.
‘Mm. He seemed a bit too relaxed. I reckon he’s got something up his sleeve. There’s some guarantee he’s got they won’t bollock him for this.’
‘He might have something on someone in the Ministry of Justice,’ Kaja said.
