feared, what sort of protection would I have then in a remand cell? Suddenly the Monsen twins’ synchronised breathing did not feel so reassuring. Nothing was reassuring. I felt as though there was no one in this world I could trust any more. No one. Apart from perhaps one person. The outsider with the overnight bag. I would have to lay my cards on the table, tell Sunded everything, ensure he took me to a different police station. Elverum was corrupt, no doubt about that, probably there was more than one undercover schemer in this car.
The radio crackled again. ‘Patrol car zero one, come in.’
Pimples grabbed the radio. ‘Yes, Lise?’
‘There’s no truck outside Bamse’s. Over.’
Telling Sunded everything would of course involve revealing that I was an art thief. And how would I convince them that I had shot Ove in self-defence, indeed, almost by accident? A man who was so doped up by Greve’s potion that he must have been cross-eyed.
‘Get a grip, Lise. Ask around. No one can hide an eighteen-metre-long vehicle in this district, OK?’
The voice that answered sounded miffed. ‘Karlsen says you usually find his truck for him, since you’re a policeman and his brother-in-law. Over.’
‘I bloody well do not! You can forget that one, Lise.’
‘He says it’s not much to ask. You got the least ugly of his sisters.’
I was being shaken by the Monsen twins’ laughter.
‘Tell the idiot that we’ve got proper police work to do today for once,’ Pimples snarled. ‘Over and out.’
I really had no idea how to play this game. It was just a question of time before my true identity would be revealed. Should I tell them straight away or was it a card I could keep up my sleeve for later?
‘Now it’s your turn, Kjikerud,’ Sunded said. ‘I’ve done a bit of checking up on you. You’re an old acquaintance of ours. And according to our documents you’re unmarried. So what did the doctor mean when he said he would look after your wife? Diana, wasn’t it?’
That card went up in smoke. I sighed and looked through the side window. Wasteland, cultivated land. No oncoming traffic, no houses, just a cloud of dust from a tractor or a car on the distant horizon.
‘I don’t know,’ I answered. I had to think more clearly. More clearly. Had to see the whole chessboard.
‘What was your relationship with Sindre Aa, Kjikerud?’
Being addressed by this alien name was beginning to wear me down. I was about to reply when I realised that I had been wrong. Again. The police really did think I was Ove Kjikerud! That was the name they had been given of the person admitted to hospital. But if they had passed the same message on to Greve, why had Greve visited this Kjikerud at the hospital? He had never heard of any Kjikerud; no one in the whole world knew that Kjikerud had anything to do with me – Roger Brown! It simply didn’t make sense. He must have found me via a different channel.
I saw the cloud of dust on the road approaching.
‘Did you hear my question, Kjikerud?’
First of all Greve had found me in the cabin. Then at the hospital. Even though I didn’t have the mobile on me. Greve didn’t have any contacts, either in Telenor or in the police. So how was that possible?
‘Kjikerud! Hello!’
The cloud of dust on the side road was travelling much faster than it had seemed from a distance. I saw the crossroads ahead of us and had a sudden sensation that it was bearing down on us and that we were on a collision course. I hoped the other car was aware that we had right of way.
But perhaps Pimples should give him a hint and use the horn. Give him a hint. Use the horn. What was it Greve had said at the hospital? ‘
‘We’re in mortal danger, Sunded.’
‘The only person in danger here is you, Kjikerud. Or whatever your name is.’
‘What?’
Sunded peered into the mirror and raised the credit card he had shown me at the hospital.
‘You don’t look like this Kjikerud on the photo. And when I checked Kjikerud out in the files it said he was one metre seventy-three. And you are… what? One sixty-five?’
It had gone quiet in the car. I stared at the cloud of dust that was drawing near at speed. It was not a car. It was a lorry with a trailer behind. It was so close now that I could read the letters on the side. SIGDAL KITCHENS.
‘One sixty-eight,’ I said.
‘So who the hell are you?’ Sunded growled.
‘I’m Roger Brown. And on the left is Karlsen’s stolen lorry.’
All heads turned left.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ growled Sunded.
‘What’s going on,’ I said, ‘is that that lorry is being driven by a guy called Clas Greve. And he knows I’m in this car and is aiming to kill me.’
‘How…?’
‘He has a GPS tracker which means he can find me wherever I am. And he’s been doing that ever since my wife stroked my hair in the garage. With a handful of gel containing microscopic transmitters that adhere to your hair and are impossible to wash off.’
‘Cut the crap!’ the Kripos detective snarled.
‘Sunded…’ Pimples began. ‘It
‘We have to stop this car now and turn round,’ I said. ‘Otherwise he’ll kill all of us. Stop!’
‘Keep going,’ Sunded said.
‘Can’t you see what’s going to happen?!’ I shouted. ‘You’ll soon be dead, Sunded.’
Sunded started his lawnmower laugh, but the lawn seemed to be too high. He saw that now, too. That it was already too late.
17 SIGDAL KITCHENS
A COLLISION BETWEEN two vehicles is basic physics. It all comes down to chance, but chance phenomena can be explained by the equation Energy x Time = Mass x difference in Velocity. Add values to the chance variables and you have a story that is simple, true and remorseless. It tells you, for example, what happens when a fully loaded juggernaut weighing 25 tonnes and travelling at a speed of 80 kph hits a saloon car weighing 1,800 kilos (including the Monsen twins) and moving at the same speed. Based on chance with respect to point of impact, construction of bodywork and the angle of the two bodies relative to one another, a multitude of variants to this story are possible, but they share two common features: they are tragedies. And the saloon car is in trouble.
When, at 10.13, the lorry and trailer driven by Greve hit patrol car zero one, a Volvo 740 manufactured in 1989, just in front of the driver’s seat, the car engine, both front wheels and Pimples’ legs were pushed sideways through the car body as the car was launched into the air. No airbags were activated as these had not been installed in Volvos before 1990. The police car – which was already a total wreck – sailed over the road, high above the crash barrier and landed on the compact clump of spruce trees lining the river at the bottom of the slope. Before the police car burst through the first treetops it had performed two and a half somersaults with one and a half twists. There were no witnesses present to confirm what I have said, but this is exactly what happened. It is – as I mentioned before – simple physics. The same as the fact that the relatively undamaged lorry continued straight over the deserted crossroads where it braked with a screech of bare metal. It snorted like a dragon as the brakes were finally released, but the smell of scorched rubber and burnt disc brake linings hung over the landscape for several minutes afterwards.
At 10.14 the spruce trees had stopped swaying, the dust had settled, the lorry stood with the engine idling as the sun continued to shine steadily down on the Hedmark fields.
At 10.15 the first car passed the crime scene, and the driver probably noticed nothing except for the lorry
