Police

45

The chair had been placed in the centre of the room, beneath the only light, a torn ricepaper lampshade hanging from the ceiling.

Harry thought that the light, the chair and the TV with the stuttering ticking sound of a dying electrical appliance had to be from the seventies, but he wasn’t sure.

The same was true of the body on the chair.

Because it wasn’t easy to say if it was Truls Berntsen, born sometime in the seventies, dead this year, who was taped to the chair. The man had no face. What had once been there was a mush of relatively fresh red blood, black dried blood and white bone fragments. This mush would have run if it hadn’t been held in place by a transparent membrane of plastic wrapped tightly round the head. One of the bones stuck through the plastic. Cling film, Harry thought. Freshly packed mincemeat the way you see it in shops.

Harry forced himself to look away and tried holding his breath to hear better as he hugged the wall. With his gun half raised, he scanned the room from left to right.

Stared at the corner leading to the kitchen, saw the side of the old fridge and the work surface, but someone could have been there in the semi-darkness.

Not a sound. Not a movement.

Harry waited. Reasoned. If this was a trap someone had set for him, he should already be dead.

He drew a deep breath. He had the advantage of having been here before, so he knew there was nowhere else to hide other than in the kitchen and the toilet. The disadvantage was that he would have to turn his back on one to check the other.

He took a decision, strode towards the kitchen, poked his head round the corner, pulled it back fast and waited for his brain to process the information it had received. Stove, piles of pizza boxes and the fridge. No one there.

He went towards the toilet. He stood in the doorway and pressed the light switch. Counted to seven. Thrust his head out. Back in. Empty.

Slid down to the floor with his back to the wall. Only now feeling how hard his heart had been pounding against his ribs.

He sat like that for some seconds. Recovering.

Then he walked over to the body on the chair. Crouched down and examined the red mass behind the plastic film. No face, but a prominent forehead, underbite and the cheap haircut left Harry in no doubt: it was Truls Berntsen.

Harry’s brain had already started processing the fact that he had been wrong. Truls Berntsen was not the cop killer.

The next thought came hard on its heels. It was definitely not alone.

Could that be what he was witnessing here: the murder of an accessory, a murderer covering his tracks? Could Truls ‘Beavis’ Berntsen have been working with someone as sick as himself, who committed this atrocity? Could Valentin have been deliberately sitting in front of the CCTV at Ullevål Stadium while Berntsen performed the murder in Maridalen? And, if so, how had they divvied the murders between them? Which murders did Berntsen have alibis for?

Harry straightened up and cast his eyes around. And why had he been summoned here? They would have found the body soon enough. And there were several things that didn’t tally. Truls Berntsen had never been involved in the investigation into Gusto Hanssen’s murder. It had been a small investigative unit consisting of Beate and a couple of other forensics officers who hadn’t had much to do because Oleg had been arrested as the presumed perpetrator minutes after they’d arrived and the evidence had supported the presumption. The only. .

In the silence Harry could still hear the low ticking. Regular, unchanging, like clockwork. He completed his thought.

The only other person bothered enough to investigate this trivial, sordid drug murder was here in the room. Himself.

He had been — like the other policemen — summoned to die at the crime scene for the unsolved murder.

The next second he was by the door pressing down the handle. And it was as he feared: it gave easily, no resistance, without opening. It was like a hotel-room door. Except that he didn’t have a key card.

Harry scanned the room again.

The thick windows with the steel bars on the inside. The iron door that had slammed shut by itself. He had walked straight into the trap like the crazed idiot he had always been, caught up in the thrill of the chase.

The ticking hadn’t got louder; it just seemed like it.

Harry stared at the portable TV. At the seconds ticking away. It wasn’t the wrong time. It wasn’t telling the time; clocks don’t go backwards.

It had been 00.06.10 when he came in, now it was 00.03.51.

It was a countdown.

Harry walked over, grabbed the TV and tried to lift it. In vain. It must have been screwed to the floor. He aimed a hard kick at the top of the TV, and the plastic casing cracked with a bang. He looked inside. Metal pipes, glass tubes, leads. Harry was definitely no expert, but he had seen the innards of enough TVs to know there was too much in this one. And enough pictures of improvised explosives to recognise a pipe bomb.

He assessed the leads and dismissed the idea at once. One of the bomb blokes in Delta had explained to him that cutting the blue or red wires and being home and dry was the good old days; now it was digital hell, with Bluetooth signals, codes and safeguards that sent the counter to zero if you fiddled with anything.

Harry took a run-up and threw himself against the door. The door frame may have had frailties of its own.

It didn’t.

Nor the bars on the windows.

His shoulders and ribs ached as he got to his feet again. He screamed at the window.

No sounds came in, no sounds went out.

Harry took out his mobile phone. Ops Room. Delta. They could use explosives. He looked at the clock on the TV. 00.03.04. They would hardly have time to transmit the address. 00.02.59. He stared at the contact list. R.

Rakel.

Ring her. Say farewell. To her and Oleg. Tell them he loved them. That they had to go on living. Living better than he had done. Be with them for the last two minutes. So as not to die alone. Have company, share a last traumatic experience with them, let them have a taste of death, give them a final nightmare to accompany them on their way.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’

Harry slipped the phone back in his pocket. Looked around. The doors had been removed. So that there was nowhere to hide.

00.02.40.

Harry strode into the kitchen, which constituted the short part of the L-shaped room. It wasn’t long enough. A pipe bomb would smash everything in here as well.

He eyed the fridge. Opened it. A milk carton, two bottles of beer and a packet of liver paste. For a brief second he weighed up the alternatives, beer or panic, before plumping for panic and pulling out the shelves, sheets of glass and plastic boxes. They clattered to the ground behind him. He curled up and forced himself inside. Groaned. He couldn’t bend his neck enough to get his head inside. Tried again. Cursing his long limbs as he organised them in the most ergonomic way.

Bloody impossible!

He looked at the clock on the TV. 00.02.06.

Harry shoved his head in, pulled up his knees, but now his back wasn’t flexible enough. Shit! He laughed out loud. The offer of free yoga he had rejected when he was in Hong Kong, was that going to be his downfall?

Houdini. He remembered something about breathing in and out and relaxing.

He breathed out, tried to clear his mind, concentrate on relaxing. Ignore the seconds. Just feel how his muscles and joints were becoming more flexible, more supple. Feel how he was gradually compressing himself.

Possible.

Hallelujah, it really was possible! He was inside the fridge. A fridge with enough metal and insulation to save him. Perhaps. If it wasn’t the pipe bomb from hell.

He held the edge of the door, cast a final glance at the TV before trying to close it. 00.01.47.

Wanted to close it but his hand wouldn’t obey. It wouldn’t obey because his brain refused to reject what his eyes had seen, but the rationally controlled section of his brain tried to ignore. To ignore because it had no relevance for the only thing that was important now, surviving, saving itself. To ignore because he couldn’t afford to do otherwise, didn’t have the time, didn’t have the empathy.

The mincemeat on the chair.

It had acquired two white spots.

White as in the whites of the eyes.

Staring straight at him through the cling film.

The bugger was alive.

Harry let out a yell and squeezed out of the fridge. Ran to the chair with the TV screen at the margin of his vision. Ripped the cling film off the face. The eyes in the mince blinked and he heard a shallow breath. He must have got some air through the hole where the bone had punctured the film.

‘Who did this?’ Harry asked.

Got no more than breath by way of an answer. The mincemeat mask began to trickle down like melting candle wax.

‘Who is he? Who’s the cop killer?’

Still only breath.

Harry looked at the clock. 00.01.26. It would take time to squeeze back in.

‘Come on, Truls! I can catch him.’

A bubble of blood began to grow where Harry guessed the mouth had to be. As it burst there was an almost inaudible whisper.

‘He wore a mask. Didn’t speak.’

‘What kind of mask?’

‘Green. All green.’

‘Green?’

‘Sur. . geon. .’

‘Surgeon’s mask?’

A small nod, then the eyes closed again.

00.01.05.

No more to be gleaned. He ran back to the kitchen. He was faster this time. He closed the door and the light went out.

Shivering in the darkness, he counted the seconds. Forty-nine.

The bastard would have died anyway.

Forty-eight.

Better that someone else did the job.

Forty-seven.

Green mask. Truls Berntsen had given Harry what he knew without asking for anything in return. So there was a bit of policeman left in him.

Forty-six.

No point thinking about it. There wasn’t any more room for him in here anyway.

Forty-five.

Besides, there was no time to release him from the chair.

Forty-four.

Even if he’d wanted to, there was no time left now.

Forty-three.

All over now.

Forty-two.

Shit.

Forty-one.

Shit, shit, shit!

Forty.

Harry kicked open the fridge door with one foot and squeezed himself out with the other. Pulled open the drawer under the worktop, grabbed what had to be a bread knife, ran to the chair and cut off the tape on the arms of the chair.

Avoided glancing at the TV, but heard the ticking.

‘Fuck you, Berntsen!’

He walked round the chair and cut the tape on the back and around the chair legs.

Put his arms round his chest and heaved.

Needless to say, the bugger was extremely heavy.

Harry pulled and cursed, dragged and cursed, no longer hearing the words coming from his mouth, hoping only they offended heaven and hell enough so that at least one of them would intervene in this idiotic but inevitable course of events.

He aimed at the open fridge, manoeuvred Truls Berntsen through the opening. The bloodstained body slumped and slipped out again.

Harry tried to stuff him in again, but it was no use. He pulled Berntsen out of the fridge, leaving trails of blood along the linoleum, let go, dragged the fridge from the wall, heard the plug come out, pushed the fridge over onto its back between the worktop and the stove. Grabbed Berntsen and thrust him up and in. Crawled in after him. Used both legs to push him as close to the back of the fridge as possible, to where the heavy refrigeration motor was housed. Lay on top of Berntsen, inhaling the smell of sweat, blood and piss that comes from sitting in a chair knowing your death is imminent.

Harry had hoped there would be room for them both, as it had been the height and width of the fridge that had been the problem, not the depth.

But now it was the depth.

He couldn’t close the bloody door behind them.

Harry tried to force it, but it wouldn’t close. There was less than twenty centimetres to go, but unless the fridge was hermetically sealed they didn’t have a hope. The shock waves would burst the liver and the spleen, the heat would burn out the eyeballs, every unattached object in the room would turn into a bullet, a machine gun spraying salvos and lacerating everything to pieces.

He didn’t even need to make a decision, it was too late.

Which also meant there was nothing to lose.

Harry kicked the door open, jumped out, got behind the fridge and pushed it upright again. Saw from over the edge that Truls Berntsen had slid out onto the floor. Couldn’t help looking past him at the TV screen. The clock showed 00.00.12. Twelve seconds.

‘Sorry, Berntsen,’ Harry said.

Then he seized Berntsen around the chest, dragged him to his feet and backed into the upright fridge. Put his hand out past Truls, pulled the door half to. And began to rock. The heavy motor was so high up that the cabinet had a high centre of gravity, and that, he hoped, would help him.

The fridge tipped backwards. They were teetering on the cusp. Truls flopped against Harry.

They mustn’t fall that way!

Harry resisted, tried to push Truls back, against the door.

Then the fridge made up its mind, fell into place and tipped the other way.

Harry caught a final glimpse of the TV screen as the fridge toppled and fell forwards.

The breath was knocked out of him as they crashed to the floor, and he panicked as he couldn’t get any oxygen. But it was dark. Pitch black. The weight of the motor and the fridge had done what he hoped, closed the door against the floor.

Then the bomb went off.

Harry’s brain imploded, shut down.

Harry blinked into the darkness.

He must have been out for a few seconds.

His ears were howling and his face felt as if someone had thrown acid into it. But he was alive.

So far.

He needed air. Harry squeezed his hands between him and Truls, pressed his back against the back of the fridge and shoved as hard as he could. The fridge swung round on its hinges and fell on its side.

Harry rolled out. Stood up.

The room looked like some kind of dystopian wasteland, a grey dust-and-smoke hell, without a single identifiable object; even what once had been a fridge looked like something else. The metal door in the hall had been blown off its frame.

Harry left Berntsen where he was. Hoping only that the bastard was dead. Staggered down the steps, into the street.

Stood gazing down Hausmanns gate. Saw the sirens on the police cars, but heard only the whistling in his ears, like a printer without paper, an alarm that someone would have to switch off soon.

And while he stood there gazing at the silent police cars he had the same thought as when he had been listening for the metro in Manglerud. That he couldn’t hear. He couldn’t hear what he should have heard. Because he hadn’t been thinking. Until he had been in Manglerud and had considered where the Oslo metro network ran. And then he finally realised what it was, what had been submerged in the darkness and hadn’t wanted to surface. The forest. There was no metro in the forest.