Death In Oslo

‘I have to be quick.’

‘Sounds like you’re whispering. Speak up!’

‘Dammit, Warren, listen to me. We’re not exactly in people’s good books at the moment.’

‘No, I noticed that here, too.’

Colin Wolf and Warren Scifford had worked together for nearly ten years. Warren’s first choice when he was putting together the BSC Unit was his peer. Colin was old school. His name might be Wolf, but he looked like a bear and he was thorough, calm and compliant. His voice was higher than normal and the delay on the line made him stressed.

‘They won’t listen to us,’ Colin said. ‘They’ve made up their minds.’

‘About what?’ Warren asked, even though he knew the answer.

‘That there’s some Islamist organisation or other behind it all. And they’re back on the al-Qaeda track again. Al-Qaeda! They’re no more involved in this case than the IRA. Or the Scouts, for that matter. And now they’ve seen red. That’s why I’m calling.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘They’ve discovered an account.’

‘An account?’

‘Jeffrey Hunter. Transferred money to his wife.’

Warren swallowed. The brown stain on his groin was disgusting. He pulled the duvet over it with his sticky hand.

‘Hello?’

‘Yes, I’m still here,’ Warren said. ‘Well I’ll be damned.’

‘Quite. It’s all too good to be true.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Listen, but I have to be quick. I want you to know. The amount was two hundred thousand dollars. The money was of course filtered through the usual channels so there is no identity, but we’ve managed to trace it back to the sender all the same. It only took the boys over in Pennsylvania Avenue five hours.’

‘And who did they find?’

‘Are you sitting down?’

‘I’m lying in bed.’

‘The cousin of the Saudi oil minister. He lives in Iran.’

‘Shit.’

‘You can say that again.’

Warren picked up the BSC Unit report again. The papers stuck to his hand. That wasn’t right. That couldn’t be right. They were right: Colin and Warren and the rest of the small, marginalised group of profilers who no one would listen to.

‘That just can’t be right,’ he said pensively. ‘The Guilty would never have done anything in such an amateur way that the money could be traced.’

‘What?’

‘That can’t be right!’

‘No, that’s why I’m calling! It’s too simple, Warren. But what about if we turn the whole thing on its head?’

‘What? I can’t hear, there’s…’

‘Turn the whole thing on its head,’ Colin shouted. ‘Let’s suppose that the trail to Saudi Arabia was laid on purpose. If we’re right, and the intention was that the money would be found and traced…’

Then everything falls into place, thought Warren, aghast. That’s the way the Guilty works. He wants this to happen. He wants chaos, he creates crises, he’s…

‘Don’t you see? Do you agree?’

Colin’s voice was so distant.

Warren wasn’t listening properly.

‘It won’t take long before this leaks,’ Colin said, as the connection deteriorated. ‘Have you been watching the stock exchange?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘When the link between Saudi Arabia and Iran becomes known…’

Oil prices, Warren realised. They’ll rocket, like never before in history.

‘… dramatic fall in the Dow Jones, and it’s so bloody sharp and…’

‘Hello,’ Warren shouted.

‘Hi. Are you still there? I’ll have to stop, Warren. I have to run because…’

The crackling was unbearable. Warren held the receiver out a few centimetres from his ear. Suddenly Colin came back. The connection was crystal clear for the first time.

‘They’re talking about a hundred dollars a barrel,’ he said grimly. ‘Before the end of next week. That’s what he wants. It fits, Warren. It all fits. I have to go. Call me.’

The connection was cut.

Warren got up from the bed. He had to shower again. With his legs wide apart, so that his sticky thighs wouldn’t touch, he waddled over to his suitcase.

He still hadn’t unpacked properly.

‘The Guilty is a man with enormous capital and a sound understanding of the West,’ he parroted from the report. ‘He has well-above-average intelligence, incredible patience and a unique ability to plan and think long term. He has built up an impressive international and extremely complex network of helpers, presumably through the use of threats, capital and costly cultivation. There is every reason to believe that few of these people know who he is. If any.’

Warren couldn’t find any clean boxer shorts. He checked and double-checked the side pockets of the suitcase. His fingers touched something heavy. He waited a moment before fishing the object out of the narrow opening.

His watch.

Verus amicus rara avis.

He’d thought that he’d lost it for good. It had bothered him more than he liked to admit. He liked the watch and was proud to have received it from Madam President. He never took it off.

Except when he had sex.

Sex and time did not go together, so he always took it off.

Deep down, he was afraid that the watch had been stolen by the woman with red hair. He couldn’t remember what she was called any more, even though it was only a week since they’d met. In a bar. She worked in advertising, he seemed to remember. Or maybe it was film.

Whatever, he said to himself and slipped the watch on to his wrist.

There were no clean boxer shorts in his suitcase.

He would just have to make do without.

‘It is unlikely that he is American,’ Warren imagined a voice saying, as if the profile document was being played on a tape recorder in his head. ‘If he is a Muslim, he is more secular than he is fanatical. He presumably lives in the Middle East, but he also has places to stay in Europe.’

It was now thirty-three minutes past six and Warren Scifford no longer felt in the slightest bit tired.

III

As he approached the guest room, Al Muffet looked down over the banister to the grandfather clock in the hall below. It was thirty-three minutes past midnight. He was sure he’d read somewhere that people slept most deeply between three and five in the morning. As his brother had been rather drunk that evening, Al reckoned he would already be sound asleep.