Death In Oslo

A Secret Service badge was not something you could send in the post. It might be important. He would drive straight to the police.

Now.

XXIII

‘You are truly unbelievable,’ Adam Stubo said.

Gerhard Skroder was lying more than sitting in his chair. His legs were wide apart and his head was laid back, his eyes fixed on something on the ceiling. The dark bags under his eyes were in stark contrast to his white skin, and made his nose seem even larger. The man whose nickname was the Chancellor had not touched the coffee or the bottle of mineral water that Adam Stubo had given him. ‘I wonder,’ the detective chief inspector continued, pulling his ear, ‘whether you boys actually realise how idiotic that advice actually is. Don’t tip your chair!’

The legs of the chair crashed to the floor.

‘What advice?’ the man asked reluctantly. He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled at the floor. The two had not had any eye contact yet.

‘The rubbish that your lawyers feed you about keeping your mouth shut when you’re being questioned by the police. Can’t you see how stupid it is?’

‘It’s worked before.’ The man laughed and shrugged without sitting up in the chair. ‘And in any case, I haven’t done anyhing wrong. It’s not illegal to drive around in Norway.’

‘There you go!’ Adam chuckled. For the first time he glimpsed something that looked like interest in Gerhard Skroder’s eyes.

‘What the fuck do you mean?’ Skroder asked and grabbed the bottle of water. He was looking straight at Adam Stubo now.

‘You always keep your mouth shut. And then we know you’re guilty. But that’s just a red rag to a bull, you see. We don’t get anything for free from you boys, so we’re even more focused on making sure that we do. And you see…’ he leant over the old, worn table that separated them, ‘in cases like this, where you actually think you’ve done nothing illegal, you can’t help yourself. Not in the long run. Let’s see, it took…’ he looked up at the clock, ‘twenty-three minutes before you were tempted to speak. Don’t you realise that we broke that stupid code of yours years ago? A person who is innocent always talks. A person who talks is often guilty. A person who is silent is always guilty. I know what strategy I would have chosen, put it that way.’

Gerhard Skroder ran a dirty index finger down the ridge of his nose. The nail was black and bitten to the quick. He started tipping his chair again, backwards and forwards. He was more uneasy now, and pulled his cap down over his eyes. Adam reached over for a pad of A4 paper, picked up a felt tip and started to scribble something down without saying a word.

Gerhard Skroder had not been difficult to find. He had been enjoying himself with a whore from Lithuania, in a tenement in Grunerlokka. The flat was one of many in the extensive police register of places where criminals hung out. The patrol that had been sent out to find him hit bull’s eye on the third attempt. Only a few hours after he had been identified by Adam on a grainy CCTV recording from a twenty-four-hour petrol station, he was in a cell. He had stewed there for an hour or two and had sworn out loud at the sight of Adam Stubo, when he came to collect him.

Since then, he had said nothing. Until now.

Silence was obviously harder to deal with than all Adam’s questions and accusations and references to photographic evidence. Gerhard Skroder chewed at the remains of his thumbnail. One of his thighs was shaking. He coughed and opened the bottle of water. Adam carried on drawing, a psychedelic pattern of blood-red stripes and stars.

‘I’ll wait for my lawyer, that’s for sure,’ Gerhard said eventually and sat up in the chair. ‘And I have the right to know what you’re accusing me of doing. I was just driving around with a couple of people in the car. Since when’s that been illegal, eh?’

Adam took his time putting the top back on the felt tip and then put it down. He still did not say a word.

‘And what the fuck has happened to Ove Ronbeck?’ Gerhard complained, obviously having thrown his original strategy overboard. ‘You’re not allowed to talk to me without my lawyer being present, you know!’

‘Yes, yes,’ Adam said. ‘I am. I can, for example, ask you whether you would like a fresh coffee. You haven’t even touched that one and it’ll be cold by now.’

Gerhard gave a sullen shake of the head.

‘And I can do you another favour.’ Adam stood up and walked along beside the table for a couple of steps, then sat down on the edge, half turned away from Gerhard.

‘What’s that?’ muttered the arrestee into his bottle.

‘Are you happy for me to do you a favour before your lawyer gets here?’

‘Fuck it, Stubo! What the hell are you talking about?’

Adam sniffed and wiped his nose on his shirt sleeve. It was unexpectedly cold in the room. The air-conditioning must have been put on the wrong setting. Perhaps it had been done on purpose, to expel the heat of so many officers working round the clock in the building. Even now, at half past seven in the evening, when the corridors were normally pretty deserted, with rows and rows of closed rooms, you could hear doors slamming and footsteps, voices and the jangling of keys; as much noise as on a busy Friday morning in June.

His jacket was hanging over the chair. He slipped down from the table and grabbed it. As he put it on, he smiled and said in a friendly tone: ‘I have never liked you, Gerhard.’

The man picked at a scab and didn’t answer.

‘And perhaps that’s why,’ Adam continued, straightening his jacket, ‘for once, I’m quite happy that you’re keeping your mouth shut.’

Gerhard played with his cap and opened his mouth to say something. He changed his mind a little too late and the word mutated into a strange grunt before he clenched his teeth. He slouched back in the chair again and vigorously scratched his crotch.

‘Very happy.’ Adam nodded in emphasis. He was standing with his back to the arrestee now, as if he was speaking to an imaginary third person. ‘Because I don’t like you. And because you’re behaving in the way that you are, I can just release you.’

He spun round and made an inviting gesture towards the closed door.

‘I can let you go,’ he said. ‘Because the people out there use completely different methods from the ones that I’m allowed to use. Completely different.’

He laughed, as if the thought of letting Gerhard Skroder go pleased him greatly.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I think I’ve made up my mind,’ Adam said, again as if he was talking to someone else. ‘Then I don’t have to put up with all this nonsense. I can go home. Call it a day.’ He patted down his jacket, as if to check that he had his wallet and keys with him before leaving. ‘And then I’ll never have to see you again. One crook fewer for the police to waste resources on.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

Gerhard slammed his fist down on the table.

‘You said we should wait for your lawyer.’ Adam smiled. ‘So you can sit here and do just that. Only alone. I’ll make sure that his job is simple. You’ll be released when the paperwork is done. A very good evening to you, Gerhard.’

He walked over to the door, unlocked it and was about to open it.

‘Wait. Wait!’

Adam paused with his hand on the door handle.

‘What is it?’

‘Who are you talking about? Who is it who… What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Gerhard, come on… they call you the Chancellor, don’t they? I would have thought you’d have some idea about international relations with a name like that.’

‘Fuck, I…’