Nemesis

23

Horsehead Nebula

Harry woke up to the telephone ringing and squinted at the clock. 7.30. It was Шystein. He had left Harry's flat only three hours ago. Then he had located the server in Egypt and now he had made further progress.

'I've e-mailed an old friend. He lives in Malaysia and does a bit of small-time hacking. The ISP is in El Tor, on the Sinai peninsula. They have quite a few ISPs there, it's a sort of centre. Were you asleep?'

'Kind of. How will you find our client?'

'There's only one way, I'm afraid. Go there with a thick wad of American greenbacks.'

'How much?'

'Enough to make someone tell you who to talk to. And to make the person you talk to tell you who you really have to talk to. And to make the person you really-'

'I've got you. How much?'

'A grand should make some headway.'

'Do you think so?'

'Off the top of my head. What the fuck do I know?'

'OK. Will you take the job?'

'Course.'

'I pay shit. You travel on the cheapest plane and stay in a crap hotel.'

'Deal.'

It was twelve o'clock and the Police HQ canteen was packed. Harry clenched his teeth and went in. He didn't dislike his colleagues on principle; he disliked them by instinct. And, as the years went by, it was getting worse.

'Completely normal paranoia,' Aune had called it. 'I feel the same myself. I think all psychologists are after me, whereas in reality it is probably no more than half of them.'

Harry scanned the room and spotted Beate with her packed lunch and the back of someone keeping her company. Harry tried not to notice the looks he received from the tables he passed. Someone mumbled a 'Hi', but Harry assumed it was meant ironically and didn't answer.

'Am I disturbing?'

Beate looked up at Harry as if he had caught her in the act.

'Not at all,' said a familiar voice, getting up. 'I was about to go anyway.'

The hairs on Harry's neck rose-not on principle, but by instinct.

'See you this evening then.' Tom Waaler smiled, a white flash to Beate's beetroot face. He took his tray, nodded to Harry and left. Beate stared down into her goat's cheese as she tried her best to assume a sensible expression while Harry took a seat.

'Well?'

'Well what?' she chirped, overdoing the failure to understand.

'You said on my answerphone you had something new,' Harry said. 'I gathered it was urgent.'

'I've worked it out.' Beate drank from the glass of milk. 'The drawings the program made of the Expeditor's face. I've been racking my brains who they reminded me of.'

'Do you mean the printouts you showed me? There's nothing even remotely like a face, it's just random lines on paper.'

'Nevertheless.'

Harry shrugged. 'You're the one with the fusiform gyrus. Out with it.'

'Last night it came to me who it was.' She took another mouthful of milk and wiped her milky smile on the serviette.

'Well?'

'Trond Grette.'

Harry stared at her. 'You're kidding, aren't you?'

'No,' she said. 'I just said there was a certain likeness. After all, Grette was not far from Bogstadveien at the time of the murder. But, as I said, I've worked it out.'

'And how…?'

'I checked with Gaustad hospital. If it's the same person who held up the DnB branch in Kirkeveien, it can't be Grette. At that time he was sitting in the TV room with at least three carers. And I sent off a couple of boys from Krimteknisk to Grette's place to get a fingerprint. Weber has just compared it with the print on the Coca-Cola bottle. It is definitely not his print.'

'So you were wrong for once?'

Beate shook her head. 'We're looking for a person who has a number of identical external characteristics to Grette.'

'Sorry to have to say this, Beate, but Grette has no external or any other kind of characteristics. He's an accountant who looks like an accountant. I've already forgotten what he looks like.'

'Right,' she said, taking the greaseproof paper off her next sandwich. 'But I haven't. That's the crunch.'

'Mm. I may have some good news.'

'Oh, yes?'

'I'm on my way to Botsen. Raskol wanted to talk to me.'

'Wow. Good luck.'

'Thank you.' Harry stood up. Hesitated. Took a deep breath. 'I know I'm not your father, but may I be allowed to say one thing?'

'Be my guest.'

He peered round to make sure no one could hear them. 'I'd watch it with Waaler, if I were you.'

'Thank you.' Beate took a large bite of her sandwich. 'And the bit about yourself and my father is correct.'

'I've lived in Norway all my life,' Harry said. 'Grew up in Oppsal. My parents were teachers. My father's retired and, since Mum died, he's lived like a sleepwalker, only occasionally visiting the land of the living. My little sister misses him. I do too, I suppose. I miss them both. They thought I would be a teacher. I did, too. But it was Police College instead. And a bit of law. Were you to ask me why I became a policeman, I would be able to give you ten sensible answers, but not one I believed myself. I don't think about it any longer. It's a job, they pay me, and now and then I think I do something good-you can live off that for a long time. I was an alcoholic before I was thirty. Perhaps before I was twenty, it depends on how you look at things. They say it's in your genes. Possibly. When I grew up I found out my grandfather in Еndalsnes had been drunk every day for fifty years. We went there every summer until I was fifteen and never noticed a thing. Unfortunately I haven't inherited that talent. I've done things which have not exactly gone unnoticed. In a nutshell, it's a miracle I've still got a job in the police force.'

Harry looked up at the NO SMOKING sign and lit up.

'Anna and I were lovers for six weeks. She didn't love me. I didn't love her. When I stopped, I did her a greater favour than I did myself. She didn't see it like that.'

The other man in the room nodded.

'I've loved three women in my life,' Harry continued. 'The first was a childhood sweetheart I was going to marry until everything went pear-shaped for us both. She took her life a long time after I'd stopped seeing her, and that had nothing to do with me. The second was murdered by a man I was chasing on the other side of the globe. The same happened to a female colleague of mine, Ellen. I don't know why but women around me die. Perhaps it's the genes.'

'What about the third woman?'

The third woman. The third key. Harry stroked the initials AA and the edges of the key Raskol had passed him over the table when he was let in. Harry had asked if it was identical to the one he had received and Raskol had nodded.

Then he had asked Harry to talk about himself.

Now Raskol was sitting with his elbows resting on the table and his fingers interlaced as if in prayer. The defective neon tube had been replaced and the light on his face was like bluish-white powder.

'The third woman is in Moscow,' Harry said. 'I think she's a survivor.'

'She's yours?'

'I wouldn't put it like that.'

'But you're together?'

'Yes.'

'And you're planning to spend the rest of your lives together?'

'Well. We don't plan. It's a little too early for that.'

Raskol gave him a doleful smile. 'You don't plan, you mean. But women plan. Women always plan.'

'Like you?'

Raskol shook his head. 'I only know how to plan bank robberies. All men are amateurs in the capturing of hearts. We may believe we have a conquest, like a general capturing a fortress, and then we discover too late-if at all-that we have been duped. Have you heard of Sun Tzu?'

Harry nodded. 'Chinese general and military strategist. He wrote The Art of War.'

'They maintain he wrote The Art of War. Personally, I believe it was a woman. On the surface, The Art of War is a manual about tactics on the battlefield, but at its deepest level it describes how to win conflicts. Or to be more precise, the art of getting what you want at the lowest possible price. The winner of a war is not necessarily the victor. Many have won the crown, but lost so much of their army that they can only rule on their ostensibly defeated enemies' terms. With regard to power, women don't have the vanity men have. They don't need to make power visible, they only want the power to give them the other things they want. Security. Food. Enjoyment. Revenge. Peace. They are rational, power-seeking planners, who think beyond the battle, beyond the victory celebrations. And because they have an inborn capacity to see weakness in their victims, they know instinctively when and how to strike. And when to stop. You can't learn that, Spiuni.'

'Is that why you're in prison?'

Raskol closed his eyes and laughed without sound. 'I could easily give you an answer, but you mustn't believe a word I say. Sun Tzu says the first principle of war is tromperie- deception. Believe me-all gypsies lie.'

'Mm. Believe you? As in the Greek paradox?'

'Well I never, a policeman who knows about more than the penal code. If all gypsies lie and I'm a gypsy, then it is not true that all gypsies lie. So the truth is I tell the truth and then it is true that all gypsies lie. So I'm lying. A circular argument which is impossible to break. My life is like that and that is the only truth.' He laughed a gentle, almost feminine laugh.

'Now you've seen my opening move. It's your turn.'

Raskol looked at Harry. He nodded.

'My name is Raskol Baxhet. It's an Albanian name, but my father refused to accept that we were Albanians. He said Albania was Europe's anal orifice. So I and all my brothers and sisters were told we were born in Romania, baptised in Bulgaria and circumcised in Hungary.'

Raskol explained that his family were probably Meckari, the largest of the Albanian gypsy groups. The family fled from Enver Hoxha's persecution of gypsies over the mountains into Montenegro and began to work eastwards.

'We were hounded everywhere we went. They claimed we were thieves. Of course we were, but they didn't even bother to gather evidence. The proof was we were gypsies. I'm telling you this because to recognise a gypsy you have to know he was born with a low-caste mark on his forehead. We have been persecuted by every single regime in Europe There is no difference between fascists, communists and democrats; the fascists were just a little more efficient. Gypsies make no particular fuss about the Holocaust because the difference from the persecution we were used to was not that great. You don't seem to believe me?'

Harry shrugged. Raskol crossed his arms.

'In 1589, Denmark introduced the death penalty for gypsy ringleaders,' he said. 'Fifty years later the Swedes decided all male gypsies should be hanged. In Moravia they cut the left ear off gypsy women, in Bohemia the right. The Archbishop of Mainz proclaimed that all gypsies should be executed without a conviction as their way of life was outlawed. In 1725, a law was passed in Prussia that all gypsies over eighteen should be executed without a trial, but later this law was repealed-the age limit was put down to fourteen. Four of my father's brothers died in captivity. Only one of them during the War. Shall I continue?'

Harry shook his head.

'But even that is a closed circle,' Raskol said. 'The reason we are persecuted and we survive is the same. We are-and want to be-different. Just as we are kept out in the cold, gadjos cannot enter our community. The gypsy is the mysterious, menacing stranger you know nothing about, but about whom there are all sorts of rumours. People of many generations believed gypsies were cannibals. Where I grew up-in Balteni, outside Bucharest-they claimed we were the descendants of Cain and doomed to eternal perdition. Our gadjo neighbours gave us money to stay away.'

Raskol's eyes flitted across the windowless walls.

'My father was a smith, but there was no work in Romania. We had to move out to the rubbish dump outside the town where the Kalderash gypsies were living. In Albania my father had been the bulibas, the local gypsy leader and arbitrator, but among the Kalderash he was just an unemployed smith.'

Raskol heaved a deep sigh.

'I'll never forget the expression in his eyes when he led home a small, tame brown bear. He had bought it with his last money from a group of Ursari. "It can dance," my father said. The communists paid to see a dancing bear. It made them feel better about themselves. Stefan, my brother, tried to feed the bear, but it wouldn't eat, and my mother asked if it was sick. He answered that they had walked all the way from Bucharest and just needed to rest. The bear died four days later.'

Raskol closed his eyes and smiled that doleful smile of his. 'The same autumn Stefan and I ran away. Two mouths fewer to feed. We went north.'

'How old were you?'

'I was eight, he was twelve. The plan was to get to West Germany. At that time they were letting in refugees from all over the world and feeding them. I suppose it was their way of compensating. Stefan thought that the younger we were, the better our chances of getting in. But we were stopped on the Polish border. We arrived in Warsaw where we slept under a bridge with a blanket each, in the enclosed area by Wschodnia, the eastern railway terminal. We knew we would be able to find a schlepper-a people smuggler. After several days' searching we found a Romany speaker who called himself a border guide and promised to get us into West Germany. We didn't have the money to pay, but he said there were ways and means; he knew some men who paid well for good-looking young gypsy boys. I didn't know what he was talking about, but obviously Stefan did. He took the guide to the side and they discussed in loud voices as the guide pointed to me. Stefan shook his head repeatedly and in the end the guide threw out his arms and gave in. Stefan asked me to wait until he came back in a car. I did as he said, but the hours passed. It was night and I lay down and slept. For the first two nights under the bridge I had been awoken by the screeching brakes of the goods wagons, but my young ears quickly learned that those were not the sounds I should be on my guard against. So I slept and didn't wake until I heard stealthy footsteps in the middle of the night. It was Stefan. He crept under his blanket and pressed up against the wet wall. I could hear him crying, but I squeezed my eyes shut and made no movements. Soon I could hear the trains again.' Raskol raised his head. 'Do you like trains, Spiuni?'

Harry nodded.

'The guide came back the next day. He needed more money. Stefan went off in the car again. Four days later I awoke at the crack of dawn and saw Stefan. He must have been up all night. He lay as he usually did with his eyes half open and I could see his breath hanging in the frosty early-morning air. There was blood on his scalp and one lip was swollen. I picked up my blanket and went to the main station where a family of Kalderash gypsies had settled outside the toilets, waiting to travel westwards. I talked to the oldest of the boys. He told me that the man we thought was a schlepper was a local pimp who frequented the station area; he had offered his father thirty zloty for the two youngest boys. I showed the boy my blanket. It was thick and in good condition, stolen from a washing line in Lublin. He liked it. It would soon be December. I asked to see his knife. It was inside his shirt.'

'How did you know he had a knife?'

'All gypsies have knives. To eat with. Even members of the same family don't share cutlery-they can catch marime, an infection. But he made a good deal. His knife was small and blunt. Fortunately, I was able to get it sharpened at the smith's in the railway workshop.'

Raskol ran the long pointed nail on the little finger of his right hand across the bridge of his nose.

'That night, after Stefan had got into the car, I asked the pimp if he had a customer for me, too. He grinned and said I should wait. When he came back, I stood in the shadow under the bridge watching the trains moving in and out of the station area. "Come here, Sinti," he shouted. "I've got a good customer. A rich Party man. Come now, we haven't got much time!" I answered: "We have to wait for the Krakow train." He came over to me and grabbed my arm. "You've got to come now, do you understand?" I was no higher than his chest. "There it is," I said, pointing. He let me go and looked up. A procession of black steel wagons rolled past our pale faces as we stared up. Then the moment I was waiting for arrived. The screeching of steel against steel as the brakes bit. That drowned everything.'

Harry squinted, as if to make it easier to see if Raskol was lying.

'As the last wagons rolled slowly by I saw a woman's face staring at me from one of the windows. She looked like a ghost. Like my mother. I raised the bloodstained knife and showed her. And do you know what, Spiuni? That's the only time in my life when I have felt complete happiness.' Raskol closed his eyes as if to relive the moment. 'Koke per koke. A head for a head. That is the Albanian expression for blood vengeance. It's the best and the most dangerous intoxicant God gave to humanity.'

'What happened afterwards?'

Raskol opened his eyes again. 'Do you know what baxt is, Spiuni?'

'No idea.'

'Fate. Hell and karma. It's what governs our lives. When I took the pimp's wallet, there were three thousand zloty in it. Stefan returned and we carried the body across the rails and dumped it in one of the eastbound goods wagons. Then we went north. Two weeks later we sneaked onto a boat from Gdansk to Gothenburg. From there we went to Oslo and a field in Tшyen where there were four caravans, three occupied by gypsies. The fourth was old and abandoned, with a broken axle. That was our home for five years. That Christmas Eve, we celebrated my ninth birthday there, with biscuits and a glass of milk under the one blanket we had left. On Christmas Day we broke into our first kiosk, and we knew we had come to the right place.' Raskol beamed. 'It was like taking candy from a baby.'

They sat in silence for a long while.

'You still don't look as if you believe me entirely,' Raskol said finally.

'Does that matter?' Harry asked.

Raskol smiled. 'How do you know Anna didn't love you?' he asked.

Harry shrugged.

Handcuffed to each other, they walked through the Culvert.

'Don't assume that I know who the robber is,' Raskol said. 'It could be an outsider.'

'I know,' Harry said.

'Good.'

'So, if Anna is Stefan's daughter and he lives in Norway, why didn't he go to the funeral?'

'Because he's dead. He took a tumble from a roof they were doing up several years ago.'

'And Anna's mother?'

'She moved south to Romania with her sister and brother when Stefan died. I don't have her address. I doubt she has one.'

'You told Ivarsson the reason the family didn't go to the funeral was that she had brought shame on them.'

'Did I?' Harry could see the amusement in Raskol's brown eyes. 'Would you believe me if I said I was lying?'

'Yes.'

'But I wasn't lying. Anna had been disowned by the family. She no longer existed for her father. He refused to mention her name. To prevent marime. Do you understand?'

'Probably not.'

They walked into the police station and stood waiting for the lift. Raskol mumbled something to himself before he said aloud: 'Why do you trust me, Spiuni?'

'What choice do I have?'

'You always have a choice.'

'More to the point is: why do you trust me? The key you got from me may be like the one you were sent for Anna's flat, but I might not have found it in the murderer's house.'

Raskol shook his head. 'You misunderstand. I don't trust anyone. I only trust my own instinct. And it tells me you aren't a stupid man. Everyone has something they live for. Something which can be taken away from them. You, too. That's all there is to it.'

The lift doors slid open and they stepped inside.

Harry studied Raskol in the semi-darkness. He sat watching the video of the bank raid with his back erect and palms pressed together, not a flicker of an expression. Not even when the distorted sound of gunfire filled the House of Pain.

'Do you want to see it again?' Harry asked as they came to the final images of the Expeditor disappearing up Industrigata.

'Not necessary,' Raskol said.

'Well?' Harry said, trying not to sound excited.

'Have you got any more?'

Harry had a feeling bad news was on the way.

'Well, I have a video from the 7-Eleven diagonally opposite the bank, where he kept a lookout before the raid.'

'Put it on.'

Harry played it twice. 'Well?' he repeated as the snowstorm raged across the screen in front of them.

'I know he's supposed to be behind other raids and we could have watched them, too,' Raskol said, looking at his watch. 'But it is a waste of time.'

'I thought you said time was the only thing you had enough of.'

'An obvious lie,' he said, standing up and proffering his hand. 'Time is the only thing I haven't got. You'd better put the cuffs back on, Spiuni.'

Harry cursed to himself. He slapped the handcuffs on Raskol and they shuffled sideways between the table and the wall to the door. Harry grabbed the door handle.

'Most bank robbers are simple souls,' Raskol said. 'That's why they become bank robbers.'

Harry stopped.

'One of the most celebrated bank robbers in the world was the American Willie Sutton,' Raskol said. 'When he was arrested and taken to court, the judge asked him why he robbed banks. Sutton answered: Because that's where the money is. It's become a standing expression in everyday American English and I suppose it's meant to show us how brilliantly direct and easy language can be. To me, it just represents an idiot who got caught. Good bank robbers are neither famous nor quotable. You've never heard of them because they've never been caught. Because they are not direct and simple. The one you're looking for is one of them.'

Harry waited.

'Grette,' Raskol said.

'Grette?' Beate stared at Harry with her eyes popping out of her head. 'Grette?' The vein on her neck was swollen. 'Grette has an alibi! Trond Grette is an accountant with bad nerves, not a bank robber! Trond Grette…is…is…'

'Innocent,' Harry said. 'I know.' He had closed the office door behind him and sunk deep into the chair in front of the desk. 'But we're not talking about Trond Grette.'

Beate's mouth closed with an audible, wet click.

'Have you heard of Lev Grette?' Harry asked. 'Raskol said he had only needed the first thirty seconds to know, but he'd wanted to see the rest to be sure because no one has seen Lev Grette for several years. According to the latest rumour Raskol had heard, Grette was living somewhere abroad.'

'Lev Grette,' Beate said, and her gaze wandered into the distance. 'He was such a wonder boy. I remember my father talking about him. I've read reports of robberies he was suspected of having been involved in when he was just sixteen. He was a legend because the police never caught him, and when he disappeared for good, we didn't even have his fingerprints.' She looked at Harry. 'How could I be so stupid? Same build. Similar features. Trond Grette's brother, isn't it.'

Harry nodded.

Beate knitted her brows. 'But that means Lev Grette shot his own sister-in-law.'

'It makes a few things fall into place, doesn't it.'

She nodded slowly. 'The twenty centimetres between the faces. They knew each other.'

'And if Lev Grette knew he had been recognised…'

'Of course,' Beate said. 'She was a witness. He couldn't take the risk that she would give him away.'

Harry got up. 'I'll ask Halvorsen to brew up something really strong for us. Now let's have a look at the video.'

'My guess is that Lev Grette didn't know that Stine worked there,' Harry said, his eyes on the screen. 'The interesting thing is that he probably recognises her and still chooses to use her as the hostage. He must have known she would recognise him close up, by the voice, if nothing else.'

Beate shook her head in incomprehension as she absorbed the pictures of the bank concourse where everything was temporarily quiet, and August Schulz, with shambling gait, was in mid-trek. 'So why did he do it?'

'He's a pro. Doesn't leave anything to chance. Stine Grette was doomed from this moment on.' Harry freeze-framed the moment when the robber had come in the door and scanned the room. 'When Lev Grette saw her and knew there was a chance he could be identified, he knew she had to die. So he might just as well use her as the hostage.'

'Ice cold.'

'Minus forty. The only thing I don't quite see is why he's prepared to go as far as murder to avoid recognition when he's already wanted for other bank jobs.'

Weber came in with a tray of coffees.

'Yes, but Lev Grette is not wanted for any robberies,' he said, balancing the tray until it was on the coffee table. The room looked as if it had been decorated once in the fifties and then remained untouched by human hand. The plush chairs, the piano and the dusty plants on the windowsill radiated an eerie stillness. Even the pendulum of the grandfather clock in the corner swung soundlessly. The white-haired woman with the beaming eyes in the framed glass on the mantelpiece laughed without sound. The stillness which seemed to have entered when Weber was widowed eight years ago had silenced everything around him; it would even be difficult to get a note out of the piano. The flat was on the ground floor of an old apartment block in Tшyen, but the noise of the cars outside merely emphasised the silence. Weber sat down in one of the wing chairs, cautiously, as though it were a display item in a museum.

'We never found any concrete evidence that Grette had been involved in any of the robberies. No statement from witnesses, no grasses had anything on him, no fingerprints and no other forensic leads. The reports only confirm that he was a suspect.'

'Mm. So, provided Stine Grette didn't report him, he was a man with a clean sheet?'

'Right. Biscuit?'

Beate shook her head.

It was Weber's day off, but Harry had insisted on the telephone that they had to talk immediately. He knew Weber was reluctant to receive visitors at home, but that couldn't be helped.

'We talked to the duty officer at Krimteknisk to compare the prints on the Coca-Cola bottle with the prints from earlier raids Lev Grette was suspected of carrying out,' Beate said. 'Nothing.'

'As I said,' Weber said, checking the lid of the coffee pot was on properly, 'Lev Grette's prints were never found at a crime scene.'

Beate thumbed through her notes. 'Do you agree with Raskol that Lev Grette is our man?'

'Well, why not?' Weber started pouring the coffee.

'Because he never used violence in any of the raids where he was a suspect. And because she was his sister-in-law. Murdering because you might be recognised-isn't that a rather feeble motive for murder?'

Weber stopped pouring and looked at her. He glanced quizzically at Harry, who shrugged his shoulders.

'No,' he said. And continued to pour. Beate flushed a deep red.

'Weber comes from the classical school of detection,' Harry said almost apologetically. 'His opinion is that murder by definition excludes rational motives. There are just degrees of confused motives, which can at times resemble reason.'

'That's how it is,' Weber said, putting down the coffee pot.

'I wonder,' Harry said, 'why Lev Grette left the country if the police had nothing on him anyway.'

Weber brushed invisible dust off the arm of the chair. 'I don't know for sure.'

'For sure?'

Weber pressed the thin, fragile porcelain coffee-cup handle between a large, fat thumb and a nicotine-stained index finger. 'There was a rumour going round at the time. Nothing we had any faith in. Allegedly, he wasn't fleeing from the police. Someone had heard the last bank job hadn't gone according to plan. Grette had left his partner in the lurch.'

'In what way?' Beate asked.

'No one knew. Some thought Grette had been the getaway driver and had driven off when the police arrived, leaving the other man in the bank. Others said the raid had been a success, but Grette had cleared off abroad with all the money.' Weber took a sip and lowered the cup with care. 'The interesting side to the case we're talking about now is perhaps not the how, but the who. Who was this second person?'

Harry searched Weber's eyes. 'Do you mean it was…?'

The veteran forensics expert nodded. Beate and Harry exchanged glances.

'Fuck,' said Harry.

Beate kept an eye on the traffic to the left, waiting for a gap in the stream of cars from the right in Tшyengata. The rain beat down on the roof. Harry closed his eyes. He knew if he concentrated he could make the swish of passing cars become waves beating against the bows of the ferry as he stood in the breeze gazing down at the white froth, holding his grandfather's hand. But he didn't have time.

'So Raskol had unfinished business with Lev Grette,' Harry said, opening his eyes. 'And picks him out as the robber. Is it really Grette in the video or is it just Raskol getting his own back? Or yet another of Raskol's tricks to fool us?'

'Or as Weber said-just a rumour,' Beate said. The cars continued to pass from the right as she impatiently drummed her fingers on the steering wheel.

'You may be right,' Harry said. 'If Raskol wanted to get his own back on Grette, he wouldn't have needed police help. Supposing they're only rumours, why pick out Grette, if Grette didn't do it?'

'A whim?'

Harry shook his head. 'Raskol is a strategist. He doesn't pick out the wrong man without a good reason. I'm not sure the Expeditor was working solo here.'

'What do you mean?'

'Perhaps someone else planned the robberies. Part of a network importing arms. The getaway car. Undercover flat. A cleaner, who spirits away the clothes and weapons afterwards. And a launderer, who launders the money.'

'Raskol?'

'If Raskol wanted to distract our attention from the real guilty party, what better than to send us off on a search for a man whose whereabouts no one knows, who is dead and buried or who has settled abroad under a new name, a suspect we'll never eliminate from our inquiries? By selling us a long-term lemon he can have us chasing our shadows instead of his man.'

'So you think he's lying?'

'All gypsies lie.'

'Oh?'

'I'm quoting Raskol.'

'He's got a good sense of humour then. And why shouldn't he lie to you, if he's lied to everyone else?'

Harry didn't answer.

'At last a gap,' Beate said, lightly touching the accelerator.

'Wait!' Harry said. 'Turn right. To Finnmarkgata.'

'Right,' she said, dismayed, and turned into the road in front of Tшyen park. 'Where are we going?'

'We're going to pay Trond Grette a visit at home.'

The net in the tennis court had been removed. And there was no light in any of the windows in Grette's house.

'He's not at home,' Beate concluded after ringing twice.

The neighbour's window opened.

'Trond's in alright,' came the trill from the woman's wrinkled face, which Harry thought even browner than the last time they had seen it. 'He just won't open up. Keep your finger on the bell, then he'll come.'

Beate pressed the button and they could hear the terrorising ring inside the house. The neighbour's window closed and immediately afterwards they were looking into a pale face with two bluish-black bags beneath unresponsive eyes. Trond Grette was wearing a yellow dressing gown. He looked as if he had just got out of bed after sleeping for a week. And it hadn't been enough. Without a word, he raised his hand and waved them in. There was a flash of sunlight as it caught the diamond ring on the little finger of his left hand.

'Lev was different,' Trond said. 'He tried to kill a man when he was fifteen.'

He smiled into space, as though recalling a dear memory.

'We seemed to have been given a complete set of genes to share between us. What he didn't have, I had-and vice versa. We grew up here in Disengrenda, in this house. Lev was a legend in the area, but I was just Lev's little brother. One of the first things I can remember was from school when Lev was balancing on the school roof in the break. That was four floors up and none of the teachers dared to bring him down. We stood below cheering while he danced around with his arms out to the side. I can still see his body against the blue sky. I wasn't frightened for a moment; it didn't even occur to me that my brother might fall off. I think everyone felt like that. Lev was the only one who stood up to the Gausten brothers from the flats in Traverveien, even though they were at least two years older and had been in a youth detention centre. Lev took Dad's car when he was fourteen, drove to Lillestrшm and came back with a bag of Twist which he'd nicked from the station kiosk. Dad didn't know anything about it. Lev gave me the sweets.'

Trond Grette seemed to be trying to laugh. They had sat down around the table. Trond had made cocoa. He had poured the cocoa powder from a tin he had stood staring at for a long time. Someone had written COCOA on the metal tin with a felt pen. The handwriting was neat, feminine.

'The worst thing was that Lev could have done well for himself,' Trond said. 'His problem was that he tired of things so quickly. Everyone said he was the greatest football talent there had been in Skeid for many years, but when he was selected for the national boys' team he didn't even bother to turn up. When he was fifteen he borrowed a guitar and two months later he was performing his own songs at school. Afterwards he was asked by a guy called Waaktar to join a band in Grorud, but he turned him down because they weren't good enough. Lev was the type who can do everything. He could have got through school as easy as you like if he'd done his homework and hadn't skived so much.' Trond gave a crooked smile. 'He paid me in stolen goods to copy his handwriting and do his essays for him. At least his mark in Norwegian was in safe hands.' Trond laughed, but was soon serious again. 'Then he got sick of the guitar and began to hang out with a gang of older boys from Еrvoll. Lev never seemed to think there was any danger in letting go of what he had. There was always something else, something better, something more exciting around the next bend.'

'This may seem a stupid thing to ask a brother, but would you say you knew him well?' Harry asked.

Trond reflected. 'No, it's not a stupid question. Yes, we grew up together. And yes, Lev was outgoing and funny, and everyone-boys as much as girls-wanted to know him. But actually Lev was a lone wolf. He once said to me he had never had any real pals, just fans and girlfriends. There was a lot I didn't know about Lev. Like when the Gausten brothers came to cause trouble. There were three of them and they were all older than Lev. I and the other local boys cleared off as soon as we saw them. But Lev stayed where he was. For five years, they beat him up. Then, one day, the oldest boy came on his own-Roger. We cleared off as usual. When I peered round the corner of the house I could see Roger lying on the ground with Lev on top. Lev had his knees on Roger's arms and was holding a stick. I went closer to see. Apart from the heavy breathing, not a sound came from either of them. That was when I saw that Lev had put the stick in Roger's eye socket.'

Beate shifted position in her chair.

'Lev was fully concentrated, as if he was doing something which required great precision and care. He seemed to be trying to prise out the eyeball. Roger was weeping blood; it ran from the eye, down his ear and dripped from the lobe onto the tarmac. It was so quiet you could hear the blood hitting the ground. Drip, drip, drip.'

'What did you do?' Beate asked.

'I threw up. I've never been able to stand the sight of blood; it makes me dizzy and feel unwell.' Trond shook his head. 'Lev let Roger go and came back home with me. Roger had his eye repaired, but we never saw the Gausten brothers on our patch again. I'll never forget the sight of Lev with the stick, though. It was at moments like that when I thought my big brother could occasionally become someone else, someone I didn't know, who dropped by on the odd unexpected visit. Unfortunately the visits became more and more frequent after that.'

'You said something about him trying to kill a man.'

'It was a Sunday morning. Lev had a screwdriver and a pencil with him, and cycled down to one of the footbridges over Ringveien. You know these bridges, don't you? They're a bit scary because you have to walk on square metal grids and look down on the tarmac seven metres below. As I said, it was Sunday morning, and there weren't many people about. He loosened the screws of one of the grids and left two screws on one side and the pencil in the corner under the grid. Then he waited. First of all, a lady came along, looking 'freshly fucked' as he put it. Well dressed, tousled hair, cursing and hobbling on a broken stiletto heel.' Trond laughed quietly. 'For a fifteen-year-old, Lev had a lot about him.' He lifted the cup to his mouth and looked out of the kitchen window in surprise; a dustbin lorry was parked in front of the rubbish bins behind the rotary driers. 'Is it Monday today?'

'No,' said Harry, who hadn't touched his cup. 'What happened to the girl?

'There are two lines of metal grids. She took the one to the left. Bad luck, Lev said. He said he would have preferred her rather than the guy. Then the man came. He walked on the right-hand side. Because of the pencil in the corner the loose grid was a bit higher than the others. Lev thought the man had seen the danger as he walked slower and slower, the nearer he came. Just as he was going to take the last step he seemed to freeze in the air.'

Trond slowly shook his head as he watched the lorry groaning and chewing up all the neighbours' refuse.

'As he put his foot down, the grid opened like a trapdoor. You know, like the ones they used in hangings. The man broke both legs as he hit the tarmac. Had it not been a Sunday morning he would have been run over straightaway. Bad luck, Lev called it.'

'Did he say that to the police, too?' Harry asked.

'The police, yes,' Trond said, gazing into his cup. 'They came two days later. I opened the door. They asked if the bike outside belonged to anyone in the house. I said yes. Turned out a witness had seen Lev cycling away from the footbridge and had given a description of the bike and a boy in a red jacket. So I showed them the quilted jacket Lev had been wearing.'

'You?' Harry said. 'You gave your own brother away?'

Trond sighed. 'I said it was my bike. And my jacket. Lev and I look very similar.'

'Why on earth did you do that?'

'I was just fourteen and too young for them to do anything. Lev would have ended up in the detention centre where Roger Gausten was.'

'But what did your mother and father say?'

'What could they say? Everyone who knew us knew that Lev had done it. He was the nutcase who pinched sweets and threw stones, while I was the good, kind little boy who did his homework and helped old ladies across the road. It was never talked about afterwards.'

Beate cleared her throat: 'Whose idea was it that you should take the blame?'

'Mine. I loved Lev more than anything on earth. But as the case has been dropped, I can say that now. And the fact is…' Trond put on his absent smile. 'Sometimes I wished it had been me who had dared to do it.'

Harry and Beate fidgeted with their cups in silence. Harry wondered which of them would ask. If he had had Ellen with him, they would have known intuitively.

'Where…?' they began in unison. Trond blinked at them. Harry gave Beate the nod.

'Where does your brother live now?' she asked.

'Where…Lev is?' Trond looked at them in bewilderment.

'Yes,' she said. 'We know he's been away for a while.'

Grette turned to Harry. 'You didn't say this was about Lev.' The intonation was accusatory.

'We said we wanted to talk about this and that,' Harry said. 'We've finished with this, now we're on to that.'

Trond bolted up from his chair, grabbed the cups, went over to the sink and threw out the cocoa. 'But Lev…after all he's my…what on earth has he got to do with…?'

'Perhaps nothing,' Harry said. 'If he has, we would like your help to eliminate him from our inquiries.'

'He doesn't even live in this country,' Trond groaned, turning round to face them.

Beate and Harry looked at each other.

'So where does he live?' Harry asked.

Trond hesitated exactly a tenth of a second too long before answering: 'I don't know.'

Harry watched the yellow dustbin lorry pass outside. 'You're not very good at lying, are you.'

Trond answered him with a rigid stare.

'Mm,' Harry said. 'Perhaps we can't expect you to help us find your brother. On the other hand, it was your wife who was killed. And we have a witness who fingered your brother as the murderer.' He raised his eyes towards Trond as he said the last word and saw his Adam's apple give a jump under the pale skin. In the ensuing silence they could hear a radio playing in the next-door flat.

Harry coughed. 'So if there's anything you can tell us, we would greatly appreciate it.'

Trond shook his head.

They sat for a few moments, then Harry got up. 'Fine. You know where to find us if you think of anything.'

Outside on the step, Trond didn't seem as tired as when they arrived. Red-eyed, Harry peered up into the low sun protruding between the clouds.

'I understand this isn't easy for you, but maybe it's time you took off the red jacket.'

Grette didn't answer, and the last they saw as they turned out of the car park was Grette standing on the doorstep and playing with the diamond ring on his little finger, and a glimpse of a wrinkly, tanned face behind the neighbour's window.

In the evening the clouds disappeared. Harry stopped at the top of Dovregata on his way home from Schrшder's and stared upwards. The stars twinkled in the moonless sky. One of the lights was a plane flying north towards Gardemoen airport. Orion's Horsehead Nebula. Horsehead Nebula. Orion. Who had told him about it? Had it been Anna, he wondered.

On returning to his flat, he switched on the TV to see the NRK news. Heroic tales about American firefighters. He switched it off. A man's voice screamed a woman's name down in the street; he sounded drunk. Harry rummaged around in his pockets to find the note he had made of Rakel's new number and discovered he still had the key engraved with AA. He put the key at the back of the drawer in the telephone table before ringing the number. No answer. When the telephone rang, he wasn't sure if it would be her; instead he had Шystein on a crackly line.

'Shit, the way they drive here!'

'You don't need to shout, Шystein.'

'They're fucking trying to kill me on the roads here! I took a taxi from Sharm el-Sheikh. Great trip, I thought-right through the desert, not much traffic, straight road. Boy, was I wrong. It's a miracle I'm alive, I can tell you. And so hot! And have you heard the grasshoppers here-the desert crickets? They make the world's highest-pitched grasshopper noises. Goes right through the cerebral cortex, absolutely terrible. The water here is just amazing. Amazing! Completely clear with a dash of green. Body temperature, so you don't even feel it. Yesterday I got out of the sea and wasn't even sure if I'd been in…'

'Forget the sea temperatures, Шystein. Have you found the server?'

'Yes and no.'

'What does that mean?'

Harry didn't get an answer. They had clearly been interrupted by a discussion at the other end. Harry caught fragments, like 'the boss' and 'the money'.

'Harry? Sorry, the guy here got a bit paranoid. And I am too. Bloody hot, it is! But I think I've found the right server. There's always a chance they're trying to screw me, but tomorrow I'll see the works and meet the boss in person. Three minutes on the keyboard and I'll know if it's the right one. And the rest is just a question of money. I hope. Ring you tomorrow. You should see the knives these Bedouins have here…'

Шystein's laugh sounded hollow.

The last thing Harry did before switching off the light was to consult the encyclopedia. Horsehead Nebula was a dark cloud. Not a lot was known about it, nor about Orion either, except that it was considered one of the most beautiful of all the constellations. Orion was a Greek mythical figure, a Titan and a great hunter. He was seduced by Eos, for which Artemis killed him in his fury. Harry went to sleep with the sensation that somebody was thinking about him.

On opening his eyes the following morning he could feel his thoughts were scattered far and wide, torn fragments and glimpses of half-forgotten scenes. It was as though someone had ransacked his brain, and the contents, which had been carefully tidied away in drawers and cupboards, lay strewn around. He must have been dreaming. The telephone in the hall rang and rang. Harry forced himself out of bed. It was Шystein again: he was in an office in El Tor.

'We've got a problem,' he said.