for a few sweeps to improve their view.
“It’s beddy-byes now,” he said, gesturing towards the house as the lights went out in one room after another. A lamp continued to shine from one of the upstairs windows for a few minutes, but then there was only a kind of lantern by the entrance door to illumine the contours of the darkened house.
“Well, now we’ll see whether our friend Jorgen has anything better to do than to snuggle down beneath the quilt on a Friday night,” said Hanne, without sounding particularly hopeful.
An hour passed. The snow was still falling, silently and unhurriedly. Hanne had just aired the opinion that they might as well call it a day. Billy T. had snorted contemptuously. Hadn’t she ever been on surveillance duty before? He was adamant that they should sit there for another two hours.
Suddenly someone was coming out of the house. The pair in the car almost missed it as they sat there sleepily with drooping eyelids. The figure-it was a man’s-shook itself against the cold, and fumbled with the lock for what seemed ages. He was wearing a long dark coat. When he turned, he held the collar up and kept his hands crossed over his chest. He half ran towards the garage, which was below the house by the road. The garage doors opened before he reached them. Remote control, evidently.
The Volvo was navy blue, but with its lights on it was easy to follow. Billy T. kept a good distance; the traffic was so sparse at this time of night that the danger of losing sight of the car was minimal.
“It’s crazy to do a stakeout with only one patrol car,” Billy T. muttered. “These guys are paranoid. We ought to have at least two.”
“Money,” Hanne replied. “Luckily this one’s not used to the game; he’s not looking over his shoulder at all.”
They drove down to the main crossroads at Storo. The traffic signals were vacuously flashing amber like simpleminded Cyclopes, luring motorists to their doom. Two cars were slewed across the main ring road, one with its front severely damaged. The police officers couldn’t get involved, and continued towards Sandaker.
“He’s stopped,” Hanne suddenly shouted.
The Volvo, its engine still running, was parked by a telephone booth in Torshov. Lavik was having problems getting into the booth; the hinges must be stiff after all the frost and snow. But he managed to make a gap just wide enough to squeeze through. Billy T. drove calmly on round the next corner and made a U-turn with a skilful slide on the snow. He came back to the junction and parked fifty yards or so from the man in the phone booth. The light was apparently causing him discomfort: he was bending forward to shield his eyes. He had his back towards the unmarked police car.
“Phone call from a box. Well, well. Friday night. Our suspicions were correct,” said Billy T. with unconcealed delight.
“He might simply be having an affair,” said Hanne, trying unsuccessfully to dampen his enthusiasm.
“And rings her from a phone box at two in the morning? Get real, Hanne!” he scoffed, with a conviction born of professional experience.
They were silent for a while. The street was almost deserted, just the occasional drunken night owl staggering home through the snow that now lay everywhere and gave the October night a Christmassy atmosphere.
All at once the man banged down the receiver and was off again. He was obviously in a hurry to get somewhere. He leapt into his car and the wheels spun as it pulled away and raced off down Vogts Gata.
The police car glided out of the junction and accelerated after it. The next stop came equally unexpectedly. In a side street in Grunerlokka the Volvo was almost thrown into an empty parking space. They parked the police car further along the street. Jorgen Lavik vanished round a corner. Hanne and Billy T. looked at one another, and got out of the car in tacit accord. Billy T. put his arm round his colleague, suggesting in a whisper that they pretend to be lovers, and they strolled off firmly entwined towards the little street where they’d seen the lawyer disappear. It was slippery, and several times Hanne had to hold on tight to Billy T. to prevent herself falling. Her boots had leather soles.
They turned the corner and spotted them straight away. Lavik was standing in muted conversation with another man, but their gesticulations revealed something of its content. It didn’t look too amicable. There was a distance of a hundred metres between the police officers and the two men. One hundred long metres.
“We’ll take them now,” Billy T. murmured, as eager as a red setter with a scent of grouse.
“No, no,” Hanne hissed. “Are you mad? On what grounds? There’s no law against conversing at night!”
“Grounds? What the hell’s that? We stop people every day just on a hunch!”
She felt her companion brace himself, and clutched at his coat. The other two had seen them. They were near enough now to hear the men’s voices, without being able to distinguish the words. Lavik reacted to the spectators by raising his collar and making his way slowly but determinedly back to his car. Hanne and Billy T. camouflaged themselves in a passionate clinch, and heard the footsteps fading away behind them, towards the dark-blue Volvo. The unknown man still stood where he was. Suddenly Billy T. tore himself loose from Hanne’s arms and charged after him. Lavik was already round the corner on the other side of the street and out of sight. The stranger ran off, and Hanne was left standing there, not knowing what to do.
Billy T. was in tip-top condition, and was catching up with his prey by a metre a second. After fifty metres the stranger dived into a doorway, and Billy T. was only ten metres behind. He got to the door a second before it closed. It couldn’t possibly have been shut before, the man must have slammed it behind him. It was big and heavy, and slowed Billy T. down. By the time he was through the man was nowhere to be seen.
He rushed along the passageway, which issued on to an enclosed yard. It was fairly big, maybe ten metres square, and surrounded by three-metre-high walls. One wall looked like the rear of a garage or a shed; a sloping roof extended from the top of it. A flower bed had been built up in one corner, and the stringy remains of some flowers poked sadly up through the snow. There was a homemade trellis behind it, bare, the plants having only succeeded in reaching the bottom crosspiece. At the top was a man just about to scramble over the wall.
Billy T. took the diagonal across the yard in ten paces. He grabbed a boot. The fleeing man kicked out and his heel caught the officer on the forehead with a crack. But Billy T. didn’t entirely let go-with his spare hand he tried to get a proper grip on the trousers higher up. But he was unlucky: the man gave a violent jerk and freed himself. He stood holding one boot, feeling rather foolish even before he heard the second boot hitting the ground on the far side of the wall. It took him only three seconds to follow, but his quarry had made good use of his advantage. He was already well on his way to another gate, this time giving onto the street. As he reached the archway in the house wall he turned to face Billy T. He had a gun in his right hand and was aiming it directly at him.
“Police!” yelled Billy T. “It’s the police!”
He lurched to a halt. But his leather soles didn’t. They kept going. His huge figure danced five or six steps to regain its balance, his arms flailing like a broken windmill. In vain. He fell backwards onto the ground with a crash, and only the fresh snow saved him from injury. His pride, on the other hand, had taken a considerable battering, and he cursed inwardly when he heard the outer gate slam shut behind the fugitive.
He rose to his feet, and had just brushed the snow off himself when Hanne landed on the ground from the wall behind him.
“Idiot,” she said, at once reproachful and admiring. “What would you have charged the guy with if you’d caught him?”
“Unlawful possession of firearms,” the bruised policeman muttered, knocking the snow off his trophy, a man’s leather boot, size ten. He ordered a retreat. With rather ill grace.
MONDAY 26 OCTOBER
There was a whole pile of yellow message slips on the post shelf in her office. Hanne Wilhelmsen hated telephone messages. She was far too conscientious to throw them out, but knew that at least half of the eleven who had rung had nothing significant to say. The most enervating part of the job was having to respond to questions from the public, impatient victims who couldn’t see why it should take more than six months to investigate a rape by a known assailant, irascible defence lawyers enquiring about prosecution decisions, witnesses who considered themselves of greater importance than the police gave them credit for.
Two of the messages were from the same person. “Ring Askhaug, Ulleval Hospital,” they said, with a phone number. Hanne thought anxiously about all the scans they’d taken of her skull, and rang the number. Askhaug was
