A thin layer of sweat had appeared on his pallid face, and finally Gerhard pulled off his cap. His hair was flat and greasy, and a matted lock fell down over his eyes. He tried to blow it away.
‘D’you mean the Americans?’ he asked.
‘Bingo,’ Adam grinned. ‘Good luck.’
He pressed down the door handle.
‘Wait. Wait a moment, Stubo! The Americans don’t bloody well have any authority to-’
Adam burst out laughing. He threw back his head and roared. The bare walls in the sterile room made the laughter sound sharp and hard.
‘Americans? Authority? The Americans!’
He was laughing so hard that he could scarcely speak. He let go of the door handle and clutched his stomach, shook his head and hiccuped.
The arrestee sat watching, with his mouth open. He had a long history with the police and had lost count of the number of times he had been questioned by some idiot pig or other. But he had never experienced anything like this before. His pulse started racing. He could hear the blood pounding in his ears, and his throat tightened. He saw red specks in front of his eyes. He twisted his cap in his hands. When Adam Stubo had to put his hand against the wall to stop himself from collapsing with laughter, Gerhard Skroder frantically rummaged in his pocket for his inhaler. It was the only thing he had been allowed to keep when he was searched and his belongings were confiscated. He put it to his mouth. His hands were shaking.
‘It’s a long time since I’ve enjoyed myself so much,’ Adam gasped and wiped his eyes.
‘But what could the Americans do to me?’ Gerhard Skroder asked in a feeble voice, high as that of a pubescent boy. ‘We’re in Norway…’
He tried to stuff the inhaler back in his pocket, but missed. It fell on the floor and he bent down to pick it up. When he straightened up, Adam Stubo was standing in front of him, fists firmly planted on the table, with his face only ten centimetres from Gerhard’s. His paunch and his unusually broad shoulders made the policeman look like a fair-haired gorilla, and there was not even a hint of humour in his pale blue eyes.
‘You think you’re king of the world,’ Adam snarled. ‘You think you’re a star out there. You con yourself into believing that you’re one of the big boys, because you move on the periphery of the Russian mafia. You think you can look after yourself. You think that you’re hard enough to deal with hardboiled Albanian criminals and other Balkan bastards. Forget it! It’s now…
‘But I haven’t done
‘Breathe deeply,’ Adam said briskly. ‘Take more of your medicine.’
He pulled back a touch and lowered his finger.
‘I want to know everything,’ he said while the arrestee inhaled from the round blue receptacle. ‘I want to know who gave you the job. When, where and how. I want to know how much you got paid, where the money is now, who else you’ve talked to in connection with the job. I want names and descriptions. Everything.’
‘They won’t send me to Guantomo?’ gasped Gerhard.
‘Guantanamo,’ Adam corrected him and had to bite his lip hard to stop himself laughing, and this time it would be real. ‘Who knows? Who knows these days? They’ve lost their president, Gerhard. And in practice, they view you as a… terrorist.’
Adam could have sworn that Gerhard’s pupils dilated. For a moment he thought that his arrestee had stopped breathing. But then he gulped and gasped in deep breaths of air. He wiped his forehead again and again with the back of his hand, as if he thought some fateful word was written there in big letters.
‘Terrorist,’ Adam repeated and smacked his lips. ‘Not a particularly nice label to have in the US.’
‘I’ll talk,’ Gerhard stuttered. ‘I’ll tell you everything. But then I can stay here. I can stay here, can’t I? With you lot?’
‘Of course,’ Adam said in a friendly voice and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘We look after our own, you know. As long as they cooperate. We’ll take a break now, though.’
The clock on the wall said that it was thirty-nine minutes to eight.
‘Until eight,’ he said and smiled again. ‘I’m sure your lawyer will be here by then, so we can talk without any fuss. OK?’
‘Fine,’ mumbled Gerhard Skroder, who was breathing easier now. ‘Fine. But I’ll be kept here, won’t I? At the station?’
Adam nodded, opened the door and left the room.
He shut the door slowly behind him.
‘What happened?’ asked Bastesen, who was leaning against the wall, reading a file that he closed quickly when Adam appeared. ‘Same old routine? He said nothing?’
‘Yep,’ Adam replied. ‘But he’s ready to sing now. We’ll hear it all at eight o’clock.’
Bastesen chuckled and punched the air in a gesture of victory.
‘You’re the best, Adam. You really are the best.’
‘Apparently I am,’ Adam muttered. ‘At acting, at least. But now this Oscar winner needs some food.’
And as he disappeared down the corridor to find something to eat, he didn’t hear the ripple of applause as the news spread that Gerhard Skroder had cracked.
Johanne still hadn’t phoned.
XXIV
The woman now hobbling down the long corridor in the cellar, swearing and muttering under her breath, jangling her keys to keep ghosts at bay, had once been Oslo’s oldest lady of the night. She was called Hairymary back then, and had miraculously managed to keep herself alive for more than half a century.
‘May all the good forces that be protect me,’ she muttered, dragging her bad leg behind her. She had to go right to the bottom of the endless corridor. ‘And all that is devilry be gone. Damn and doggy-do.’
From the moment that she was born on the back of a truck in war-torn Finnmark, one night in January 1945, Hairymary had defied Fate’s frequent and repeated attempts to break her. She had no parents, and had never settled with any of the foster families she was forced into. After a couple of years in a children’s home, she ran away to Oslo to fend for herself. She was twelve years old. With no education, the literacy of a six-year-old and an appearance that would frighten most, her career was a given. She had borne four children – a hazard of the job – and they had all been taken from her at birth.
But at the turn of the century, fortune had smiled on Hairymary for the first time.
She met Hanne Wilhelmsen.
Hairymary had been the key witness in a murder case, and for reasons that neither of them could later explain, she moved in with the detective inspector. She had not left the flat since. She started to use her real name and became a hard-working housekeeper and cook. And she wanted only three things in return: methadone, a clean bed and a pouch of tobacco every week. Nothing more, nothing less – until Nefis and Hanne had a daughter. Mary then stubbed out her last cigarette and demanded to have a stock of business cards instead of tobacco. They were gold cardboard, with napped edges, and they said:
She had chosen the font herself. No telephone number, no address. She didn’t need them either, as she never went out and never had visitors. The pile of business cards lay on her dressing table, and every evening she would pick up the top one, kiss it lightly and then close her eyes with the card pressed to her heart and say her evening prayer: ‘Thank you, God in Heaven. Thank you for Hanne and Nefis and my little princess, Ida. Someone has use for me. Thank you for that. Good night, God.’
