Death In Oslo

‘Careful, young lady!’ The mother’s voice was sharper and she slammed the oven door shut with a bang. ‘You may be moving away from home this autumn, and then you can do what you like. But until then…’

The woman turned to her daughter. She put her hands on her hips and opened her mouth to say something else. Then she closed it again and smoothed down her hair in exasperation.

‘Just ask Caroline,’ sobbed the daughter and grabbed hold of a half-full glass of milk. ‘We were both there. I don’t know where they came from, but they got into a car. A blue car. It’s true. It’s the truth, Mum!’

‘I don’t doubt that you’re telling the truth,’ her mother replied in a strained voice. ‘I’m just trying to point out that it couldn’t have been the American president that you saw. It must have been someone else. Don’t you understand? Don’t you realise…’

With a groan, she sat down at the table and tried to hold her daughter’s hand. ‘If someone had just kidnapped the American president, they wouldn’t calmly walk over to a car parked by the Central Station on the morning of the seventeenth of May, where everyone could see them. You’ll have to stop-’

The girl pulled her hand away.

‘Where everyone could see them? Where everyone could see them? There was no one bloody else there. It was only me and Caroline and-’

‘You must try to stop being so dramatic all the time! Surely you understand that-’

‘I’m going to call the pigs. The woman was wearing the same clothes as on TV. Exactly the same. I’m going to phone, Mum.’

‘Well, if that’s what you want to do. But you’ll just make a fool of yourself. And remember that they call themselves the police. Not pigs. Phone away.’

The mother got up. There was a strong smell of cooking. She opened the window a bit.

‘Who the hell has a dinner party on the seventeenth of May, anyway?’ the girl muttered and finished the glass of milk.

‘Now you watch yourself, my girl. And stop all that unnecessary swearing!’

‘People have breakfast on the seventeenth of May, Mum. Breakfast, or at a push a nice lunch. I have never heard of anyone having a bloody-’

A casserole was thumped down on the worktop. The woman pulled off her apron and took two neat steps towards her daughter. Then she slapped the table.

‘We have a dinner party on the seventeenth of May, Pernille. We, the Schou family. And we have done so for generations, and you…’ She lifted a finger. It was trembling. ‘You had better be in the dining room at six o’clock sharp, and in a better state than you are now. Understood?’

The mother interpreted her daughter’s muttering as agreement.

‘But I did see the President,’ the girl insisted, almost inaudibly. ‘And she didn’t bloody well look like she’d been kidnapped.’

XI

The model of the Hotel Opera was made to a scale of one to fifty. It was mounted on a free-standing solid column, like a miniature accommodation platform. The details were impressive. The small swing doors in the entrance moved. The windows were made out of the thinnest glass possible, and even the curtains had the right pattern. When Warren Scifford bent his knees and peered into the foyer, he could see the yellow sofas facing each other with tiny tables in between. The lamps gave a yellow glow and the royal-blue armchairs looked temptingly comfortable.

‘But this is not the building as it stands,’ he mumbled and scratched his stubble.

‘No,’ replied the Chief of Police, Terje Bastesen. ‘It was made in connection with the renovations. The hotel management have of course been extremely…’ he searched for the right word, ‘obliging. The roof can also be removed.’

His hands were coarse and he was shaking slightly. As he put his fingers gently round the roof, it slipped. A rasping sound made a young policeman who had been in the background, in the corner of the room, rush forwards. He lifted the roof with the utmost care to reveal the hotel’s ninth floor.

‘Look at that,’ Warren Scifford exclaimed. ‘And that is where she was staying.’

The presidential suite was in the left wing of the hotel, facing south. Even when the roof had been removed from the model, the windows overlooking the fjord stayed in place. There were sliding doors leading out on to the roof terrace, which was bordered with minute flowerpots. The suite was tastefully furnished down to the smallest detail, like a doll’s house for a rich man’s spoilt daughter.

‘So you come in here…’ Bastesen used a laser pen to point; the red spot danced and shook, ‘straight into the reception room. Then you can go through here…’ the spot hopped to the east, ‘to the office. Well, it’s supposed to be some kind of office. And here we have…’ He bent down and peered short-sightedly at the model. ‘Here we have a PC and a minuscule printer. And as you can see, the bedroom is at the far end of the reception room. We assume that the Presi-that Madam President was sleeping when the kidnappers came in.’

‘Kidnappers,’ Warren Scifford repeated, carefully touching the bedclothes with his index finger. ‘As far as I know, there is no information to indicate how many there were.’

The Chief of Police nodded and popped the laser pen back in his breast pocket.

‘No, that is correct. What I’m saying is based on the message. We’ll be in touch, it says. “We”. Not “I”. We’ve got her. We’ll be in touch.’

Warren Scifford straightened up and was handed a piece of laminated paper.

‘I take it this is a copy,’ he said.

‘Of course. The original has been sent for analysis. It was your men who found it, and they… they had the sense not to touch it until it could be handled correctly.’

‘Times New Roman,’ Scifford stated. ‘The most common font of all. I assume there are no fingerprints? And it’s the sort of paper that can be found in every office and home?’

He didn’t even bother to look up to see the Chief of Police’s affirmative nod. Instead, he handed the sheet back and focused on the model again.

‘By the way, they’re not my men,’ he said, slowly moving a couple of steps to the left to get a new perspective on the entrance to the presidential suite.

‘Excuse me?’

‘You said that it was my men who found the note.’

‘Yes…’

‘They’re not my men. They’re from the Secret Service. And as I assume you know, I am…’ His hair flopped over his forehead as he bent down and closed one eye. He squinted along the corridor outside the presidential suite. ‘I am from the FBI. Different organisations.’

His voice was cool. He had still made no eye contact with the Chief of Police. But he did put his hand on the other man’s arm, as if he wanted to move an obstinate schoolboy.

‘Give me some room,’ he muttered, and once again became totally focused on the model of the Hotel Opera. ‘Is this as exact as it appears to be?’

The Chief of Police didn’t answer. A flush spread over his cheeks. He blinked several times before brushing some dust off his uniform jacket and clearing his throat.

‘Mr Scyfford,’ he said. His voice was deeper and raspier.

‘Scifford,’ the FBI agent corrected. ‘Ski, like the planks you use to walk on snow with in winter. Not sky as in clouds.’ He pointed at the ceiling.

‘I apologise, and take note of the correct pronunciation,’ the Chief of Police said slowly. ‘But before we go any further, I would just like to clarify a couple of things. First of all-’

‘Just a moment, please.’ Warren Scifford lifted a hand. ‘There’s a camera installed here, is that correct?’

He fished a pen out of his pocket and pointed towards the corridor.

‘Yes,’ Bastesen replied hesitantly. ‘And over here. Just where there’s a bend in the corridor. That way the whole corridor is kept under surveillance. From both sides. There’s also a camera here…’ He pointed to the area by