The Devil's star

37

Monday. Confession.

The two men standing opposite each other in the church of the Holy Apostolic Princess Olga were the same height. The warm, clammy air smelled of sweet smoke and acrid tobacco. The sun had shone on Oslo every day now for almost five weeks, and the sweat was running in streams down Nikolai Loeb’s thick woollen tunic as he was reading the prayer to take confession:

‘Lo, you have come to the place of healing. The invisible spirit of Jesus Christ is here and will receive your confession.’

He had tried to find a lighter, more modern tunic in Welhavens gate, but they didn’t have any for Russian Orthodox priests, they said. The prayer over, he placed the book beside the cross on the table between them. The man standing in front of him would soon clear his throat. They always cleared their throats before confessing, as if their sins were encapsulated in mucus and saliva. Nikolai had a vague sensation that he had seen the man before, but he could not remember where. And the name meant nothing to him. The man had seemed a little taken aback when he realised that the confession would be face to face and that he would even have to give his name. To tell the truth, Nikolai had had a feeling that the man had not given his real name, either. He may have come from a different congregation. Occasionally they came here with their secrets because this was a small anonymous church where they didn’t know anyone. Nikolai had often pardoned the sins of members of the established Church of Norway. If they asked for it, they got it; the mercy of the Lord was infinite.

The man cleared his throat. Nikolai closed his eyes and promised himself that he would cleanse his body with a bath and his ears with Tchaikovsky as soon as he arrived home.

‘It is said that lust – exactly like water – will find the lowest level, Father. If there is an opening, a crack or a flaw in your character, lust will find it.’

‘We are all sinners, my son. Have you any sins to confess?’

‘Yes. I have been unfaithful to the woman I love. I have been together with a wanton woman. Even though I do not love her, I have not been able to resist going back to her.’

Nikolai suppressed a yawn. ‘Continue.’

‘I… she became an obsession.’

‘Became, you say. Does that mean that you have stopped meeting her?’

‘They died.’

It was not just what he said; there was also something in his voice that startled Nikolai.

‘They?’

‘She was pregnant. I believe.’

‘I am sorry to hear of your loss, my son. Does your wife know this?’

‘No-one knows anything.’

‘What did she die of?’

‘A bullet through the head, Father.’

The sweat on Nikolai Loeb’s skin suddenly went ice cold. He swallowed.

‘Are there any other sins you would like to confess, my son.’

‘Yes. There is a person. A policeman. I have seen the woman I love go to him. I have thoughts about…’

‘Yes?’

‘Sinning. That is all, Father. Can you read the prayer of absolution now?’

A silence fell over the church.

‘I…’ Nikolai began.

‘I have to go now, Father. Would you be so kind?’

Nikolai closed his eyes again. Then he began to read and did not open his eyes until he came to ‘I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost’.

He crossed himself over the man’s bowed head.

‘Thank you,’ the man whispered. He turned and scurried out of the church.

Nikolai did not move from the spot and listened to the echo of the words still hanging between the walls. He thought he could remember where he had seen him now. In Gamle Aker assembly house. He had brought a new Star of Bethlehem to replace the ruined one.

As a priest Nikolai was bound by his oath of secrecy and he had no intention of breaking it as a result of what he had heard. Yet there was something about the man’s voice, the way he had said he had thoughts about… about what?

Nikolai gazed out of the window. Where were the clouds? It was so sultry now that something had to happen soon. Rain. First of all though, thunder and lightning.

He closed the door, knelt in front of the small altar and prayed. He prayed with an intensity that he had not felt for many years. For guidance and strength. And for forgiveness.

At 2.00 Bjorn Holm stood in the doorway to Beate’s office and told her they had something she should have a look at.

She got up and followed him into the photo lab, where he pointed to a photograph that was still hanging on a piece of cord to dry.

‘That’s from last Monday,’ Bjorn said. ‘Taken at about half past five, so roughly half an hour after Barbara Svendsen was shot in Carl Berners plass. You can easily cycle to Frogner Park in that time.’

The picture showed a girl smiling in front of the Fountain. Beside her you could see part of a sculpture. Beate knew which one it was. One of the ‘tree groups’, the carving of a girl diving. She had always stood in front of the sculpture when she and her mother and father had driven to Oslo to go for a Sunday walk in Frogner Park. Her father had explained that Gustav Vigeland had intended the diving girl to symbolise the young girl’s fear of adult life and becoming a mother.

However, today it was not the girl Beate was looking at. It was the back of a man on the margin of the picture. He was standing in front of a green litter bin. In his hand he was holding a brown polythene bag. He was wearing a tight yellow top and black cycling pants. On his head he wore a black helmet, sunglasses and there was a cloth over his mouth.

‘The courier,’ Beate whispered.

‘Maybe,’ Bjorn Holm said. ‘Unfortunately, he is still masked.’

‘Maybe.’ It sounded like an echo. Beate stretched out her hand without taking her eyes off the photo. ‘The magnifying glass.’

Holm found it on the table between the bags of chemical reagents and passed it to her.

She squeezed one eye shut as she moved the magnifying glass across the photograph.

Bjorn Holm watched his boss. Of course he had heard the stories about Beate Lonn when she was working on bank robbery cases. About how she had sat for days on end in the ‘House of Pain’ – the hermetically sealed video room – playing the videos of the robbery, frame by frame, while she checked every detail of build, body language, contours of faces behind the masks. In the end she discovered the identity of the bank robber because she had seen him in another recording, from some post office robbery 15 years before, when she had still been pre-pubescent, a recording that had been stored on the hard disk containing a million faces and every bank robbery committed in Norway since video surveillance began. Some people had maintained it was down to Beate’s unusual fusiform gyrus – the part of the brain that recognises faces – and that it must have been a talent she was born with. That was why Bjorn Holm didn’t look at the photo, just at Beate Lonn’s eyes scrutinising the picture in front of her, examining it in minute detail in a way that would be impossible to learn.

That was how he noticed that it was not the face of the man she was studying through the magnifying glass.

‘The knee,’ she said. ‘Can you see it?’

Bjorn went closer.

‘What about it?’ he said.

‘On the left knee. Looks like a plaster.’

‘You mean we should keep an eye open for people with plasters on their left knee?’

‘Very funny, Holm. Before we can find out who it is in the photo we have to find out if he could be the Courier Killer.’

‘And how do we do that?’

‘We visit the only man we know of who has seen the Courier Killer close up. Make a copy of the photo while I fetch the car.’

Sven Sivertsen stared at Harry, thunderstruck. Harry had just explained his theory to him, his impossible theory.

‘I really had no idea,’ Sivertsen whispered. ‘I never saw any of the pictures of the victims in the papers. They mentioned names when they questioned me, but none of them meant a thing.’

‘For the moment it’s simply a theory,’ Harry said. ‘We don’t know it’s the Courier Killer. We need concrete proof.’

Sivertsen smiled and said, ‘You’d better convince me first that you’ve got enough to get me off the hook already. Then I’ll agree to our giving ourselves up and you can have the use of my evidence to incriminate Waaler.’

Harry shrugged.

‘I can ring the head of my section, Bjarne Moller, and ask him to come in a patrol car and get us out of here safely.’

Sivertsen shook his head firmly.

‘There have got to be others involved in this, in higher positions in the police force than Waaler. I don’t trust anyone. You’ll have to find the proof first.’

Harry opened and closed his fist. ‘We have an alternative. One that would protect both of us.’

‘And that is?’

‘Go to the papers and tell them what we know. About the Courier Killer and Waaler. Then it would be too late for anyone to do anything.’

Sivertsen wore a sceptical expression.

‘Time’s running out for us,’ Harry said. ‘He’s getting closer. Can’t you feel it?’

Sivertsen rubbed his wrist.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Do it.’

Harry shoved his hand in his back pocket and pulled out a crumpled business card. He hesitated for a second. Possibly because he anticipated the consequences of what he was about to do. Or perhaps because he didn’t anticipate them. He tapped in the work number. The reply came surprisingly quickly.

‘Roger Gjendem.’

Harry could hear the hum of voices, the clatter of computer keyboards and telephones ringing in the background.

‘This is Harry Hole. I want you to listen very carefully, Gjendem. I have some information about the Courier Killer. And arms smuggling. One of my colleagues in the police is involved. Do you understand?’

‘I believe so.’

‘Good. The story’s yours exclusively so long as you publish it on Aftenposten ’s web pages as quickly as possible.’

‘Of course. Where are you ringing from, Inspector Hole?’

Gjendem sounded less surprised than Harry had expected.

‘It’s not important where I am. I have information which proves Sven Sivertsen cannot be the Courier Killer and that a leading policeman is involved in a network of arms smuggling that has been operating in Norway for several years.’

‘That’s fantastic. But I’m sure you’re aware that I cannot write that on the basis of one telephone conversation.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘No serious newspaper would print an allegation about a named police inspector smuggling arms without checking that the sources are reliable. I don’t doubt for a minute that you’re the person you say you are, but how do I know that you aren’t drunk or crazy or both? If I don’t check this out properly, the paper can be sued. Let’s meet, shall we, Inspector Hole. Then I’ll write everything you tell me. I promise.’

In the pause that followed Harry could hear someone laughing in the background. A carefree ripple of laughter.

‘Don’t even think about ringing other papers – they’ll give you the same answer. Trust me, Inspector.’

Harry took a deep breath.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘At Underwater in Dalsbergstien. At five o’clock. Come on your own or I won’t turn up. And not a single word about this to a living soul, understood?’

‘Understood.’

‘See you.’

Harry pressed the ‘off’ button and chewed his bottom lip.

‘I hope that was wise,’ said Sven.

Bjorn Holm and Beate turned off busy Bygdoy alle and one moment later they found themselves in a silent road with misshapen detached timber houses on one side and fashionable brick apartment buildings on the other. The kerbsides came complete with rows of German makes of car.

‘Nobsville,’ Bjorn said.

They pulled up outside a doll’s-house-yellow building.

A voice answered the intercom after the second buzz.

‘Yes?’

‘Andre Clausen?’

‘I believe so, yes.’

‘Beate Lonn, police. May we come in?’

Andre Clausen was waiting for them in the doorway, dressed in a thigh-length dressing gown. He was scratching at the scab of a cut on his cheek as he made a half-hearted attempt at suppressing a yawn.

‘Apologies,’ he said. ‘I got home late last night.’

‘From Switzerland perhaps?’

‘No, I’ve just been up in the mountains. Come in.’

Clausen’s sitting room was a little on the small side for the collection of objets d’art he had, and Bjorn Holm was quick to establish that Clausen’s taste tended more towards Liberace than minimalism. Water trickled through a fountain in the corner where a naked goddess stretched up towards the Sistine paintings on the vaulted ceiling.

‘I’d like you to concentrate first and think about the time you saw the Courier Killer in the reception area at the solicitors’ office,’ Beate said. ‘And then look at this.’

Clausen took hold of the picture and studied it while running a finger across the cut on his cheek. Bjorn Holm examined the sitting-room area. He heard a shuffling noise behind a door and the sound of paws scratching against the other side.

‘Maybe,’ Clausen said.

‘Maybe?’ Beate was perched on the edge of the chair.

‘Very possible. The clothes are the same. The cycling helmet and the sunglasses too.’

‘Good. And the plaster on his knee. Did he have that?’

Clausen laughed softly.

‘As I told you, it is not my habit to study men’s bodies in such detail. But if it makes you happier, I can say that my immediate reaction is that this is the man I saw. Beyond that…’

He made a gesture with outstretched arms.

‘Thank you,’ Beate said getting up.

‘My pleasure,’ Clausen said, following them to the door where he proffered his hand. That was a strange thing to do, Holm thought, but he took it. But when Clausen proffered his hand to Beate, she shook her head with a little smile:

‘Sorry, but… you have blood on your fingers. And your chin’s bleeding.’

Clausen put a hand up to his face.

‘Indeed,’ he said smiling. ‘That’s Truls. My dog. Our games at the weekend got a little out of hand.’

He looked Beate in the eyes and his smile became broader and broader.

‘Goodbye,’ Beate said.

Bjorn Holm was not quite sure why he shuddered when he emerged into the heat again.

Klaus Torkildsen had pointed both fans in the room towards his face, but it felt as if they were only blowing the hot air from the machine back at him. He tapped his finger against the thick glass of the screen. Under the internal number in Kjolberggata. The subscriber had just rung off. That was the fourth time today that the person in question had spoken to precisely that mobile phone number. Brief conversations.

He double-clicked on the mobile phone number to find the subscriber’s name. A name appeared on the screen. He double-clicked to find an address and a profession. When it came up, Klaus sat looking at the information for a moment. Then he dialled the number he had been told to call when he had something to report.

A phone was picked up.

‘Hello?’

‘This is Torkildsen at Telenor. Who am I talking to?’

‘Never mind about that, Torkildsen. What have you got for us?’

Torkildsen could feel his sweaty upper arms sticking to his chest.

‘I’ve done a bit of checking around,’ he said. ‘Hole’s mobile is constantly on the move and impossible to trace. But there is another mobile which has rung the internal number in Kjolberggata several times.’

‘Right. Whose is it?’

‘The subscription is under the name of Oystein Eikeland. His profession is given as taxi driver.’

‘So?’

Torkildsen pushed out his lower lip and tried to blow hot air upwards to clear his glasses, which were wet with condensation.

‘I was just thinking that there could be a connection between a telephone that is continually on the move all over town and a taxi driver.’

The line went quiet at the other end.

‘Hello?’ Torkildsen said.

‘Received and understood,’ the voice said. ‘Keep tracing the numbers, Torkildsen.’

As Bjorn Holm and Beate wandered into reception in Kjolberggata, Beate’s mobile phone bleeped.

She whipped it out of her belt, read the display and placed it against her ear in one sweeping movement.

‘Harry? Ask Sivertsen to roll up his left trouser leg. We’ve got a picture of a masked cyclist in front of the Fountain at half past five last Monday with a plaster on his knee. And he’s holding a brown polythene bag.’

Bjorn had to take longer strides to keep up with his diminutive female colleague as she made her way down the corridor. He heard a voice crackling on the phone.

Beate swung into her office.

‘No plaster and no wound? No, I know that doesn’t prove anything, but for your information Andre Clausen has more or less identified the cyclist in the picture as the same person he saw at Halle, Thune and Wetterlid.’

She sat down behind her desk.

‘What?’

Bjorn Holm saw three deep sergeant’s chevrons appear on her forehead.

‘Right.’

She put down the phone and stared at it as if she didn’t know whether to believe what she had just heard.

‘Harry thinks he knows who the Courier Killer is,’ she said.

Bjorn didn’t answer.

‘Check to see if the lab is free,’ she said. ‘He’s given us a new job.’

‘What kind of job?’ Bjorn asked.

‘A real shit job.’

Oystein Eikeland was sitting in a taxi in the parking area below St Hanshaugen with his eyes half closed, peering down the street at a girl with long legs, imbibing caffeine on a seat on the pavement outside Java. The hum of the air conditioning was drowned out by the sounds of music the loudspeakers were emitting.

Malicious rumour had it that the song was a Gram Parsons number and that Keith and the Stones had nicked it for the Sticky Fingers album while they were down in France. The ’60s were over and they were trying to drug themselves into creativity: ‘Wild Horses’.

One of the back doors opened. Oystein was startled. Whoever it was must have come from behind, from the park. In the mirror he saw a tanned face with a powerful jaw and reflector sunglasses.

‘Lake Maridal, driver.’ The voice was soft, but the command intonation was unmistakable. ‘If it isn’t too much trouble…’

‘Not at all,’ Oystein mumbled as he turned down the music and took a last deep drag of his cigarette before he tossed it out of the open window.

‘Whereabouts by Lake Maridal?’

‘Just drive. I’ll tell you.’

They drove down Ullevalsveien.

‘Rain is forecast,’ Oystein said.

‘I’ll tell you,’ the voice repeated.

No tip then, Oystein thought.

After a ten-minute drive they had left the residential quarter behind them and suddenly it was all fields, farms and Lake Maridal. It was such a wonderful transition that an American passenger had once asked Oystein if they were in a theme park.

‘You can take the turning up there to the left,’ the voice said.

‘Up into the woods?’ Oystein asked.

‘Right. Does that make you nervous?’

The thought had never occurred to Oystein. Until now. He looked into the mirror again, but the man had moved across to the window so that he could only see half of his face.

Oystein slowed down, indicated he was turning left and swung into the turning. The gravel track in front of them was narrow and bumpy with grass growing in the middle.

Oystein hesitated.

Branches with green leaves that reflected in the light hung over the track on each side and seemed to be waving them on. Oystein put his foot on the brake. The gravel crunched under the tyres and the car came to a halt.

‘Sorry,’ he said to the mirror. ‘Just had the chassis fixed for 40 thousand and we are under no obligation to drive on tracks like these. I can ring for another car if you like.’

The man in the back seat appeared to be smiling, at least the half he could see.

‘And which telephone were you thinking of using, Eikeland?’

Oystein felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising.

‘Your own telephone?’ the voice whispered. ‘Or Harry Hole’s?’

‘I’m not exactly sure what you’re talking about, but the trip stops here, mister.’

The man laughed.

‘ Mister? I don’t think so, Eikeland.’

Oystein felt an urge to swallow, but resisted the temptation.

‘Listen, you don’t have to pay since I couldn’t drive you to your destination. Get out and wait here and I’ll organise another car for you.’

‘Your record says that you’re smart, Eikeland. So I assume you know what I’m after. I hate to have to use this cliche, but it is up to you whether we do this the easy way or the hard way.’

‘I really don’t know what… Ow!’

The man had slapped the back of Oystein’s head, just above the headrest, and as Oystein was automatically thrust forwards, he could feel, to his surprise, his eyes filling with tears. It wasn’t that it hurt particularly. The blow had been of the type they handed out at junior school: light, a sort of introductory humiliation. The tear ducts were, however, already aware of what his brain still refused to accept. That he was in serious trouble.

‘Where’s Harry’s phone, Eikeland? In the glove compartment? In the boot? In your pocket perhaps?’

Oystein didn’t answer. He sat still as his eyes fed his brain. Forest on both sides. Something told him that the man in the back seat was fit and that he would catch Oystein in a matter of seconds. Was the man alone? Should he set off the alarm that was connected to the other cars? Was it a good idea to get other people involved?

‘I see,’ the man said. ‘The hard way then. And do you know what?’ Oystein was unable to react before he felt an arm around his neck pulling him back against the headrest. ‘Deep down, that’s what I’d hoped.’

Oystein lost his glasses. He stretched his hand out towards the steering column, but couldn’t reach.

‘Press the alarm and I’ll kill you,’ the man whispered into his ear. ‘And I’m not speaking metaphorically, Eikeland, but in the sense that I will literally take your life.’

Despite the fact that his brain was not getting oxygen, Oystein Eikeland could hear, see and smell unusually well. He could see the network of veins on the inside of his own eyelids, smell the aroma of the man’s after-shave and hear the slightly whining overtone of glee – like a kind of drivebelt – in the man’s voice.

‘Where is he, Eikeland? Where is Harry Hole?’

Oystein opened his mouth and the man released his grip.

‘I have no idea what it is you -’

Then the arm was back, squeezing.

‘Last try, Eikeland. Where’s your piss-artist pal?’

Oystein felt the pains, the irritating will to live, but he also knew that it would soon be over. He had experienced similar things before. It was just a phase, a stage before the much more pleasurable sense of indifference kicked in. The seconds passed. The brain was beginning to shut down branch lines. First his sight went.

Then the man let go again and the oxygen streamed into his brain. Sight returned. And the pain.

‘We’ll find him anyway,’ the voice said. ‘You can choose whether it’s before or after you’ve left us.’

Oystein felt something cold and hard move across his temples. Then across the bridge of his nose. Oystein had seen his share of Westerns, but he had never seen a. 45calibre revolver close up before.

‘Open up.’

Let alone tasted one.

‘I’m going to count to five. Then I’ll shoot. Nod if there’s something you want to say to me. Preferably before I count to five. One…’

Oystein tried to combat his fear of death. Tried telling himself that mankind is rational and that the man behind him would not gain anything by taking his life.

‘Two…’

Logic is with me, Oystein thought. The barrel had a nauseous smell of metal and blood.

‘Three. And don’t worry about the seat covers, Eikeland. I’ll tidy up and wash everything down thoroughly after me.’

Oystein could feel his body beginning to shake, an uncontrollable reaction he could only view as a spectator, and he was reminded of a rocket he had seen on TV that had shaken in the same way, seconds before it was fired into the cold, empty void of outer space.

‘Four.’

Oystein nodded. Repeatedly and with vigour.

The gun disappeared.

‘It’s in the glove compartment,’ he gasped. ‘He said I should keep it switched on and I wasn’t to touch it if it rang. He took mine.’

‘I’m not interested in the phones,’ the voice said. ‘I want to know where Hole is.’

‘I don’t know. He didn’t say anything. Yes, he did. He said it was best for both of us if I knew nothing.’

‘He was lying,’ the man said.

The words came slowly and calmly, and Oystein could not make out whether the man was angry or enjoying himself.

‘Just best for him, Eikeland. Not for you.’

The cold gun barrel on Oystein’s cheek felt like a glowing iron.

‘Wait! Harry did say something. I remember now. He said that he was going to lie low at his place.’

The words streamed out of Oystein’s mouth; he had the impression that he was pumping them out half formed.

‘We’ve been there, you numbskull,’ the voice said.

‘I don’t mean the place where he lives. His place in Oppsal. The place where he grew up.’

The man laughed and Oystein smarted with pain as the gun barrel was thrust up his nostril.

‘We’ve been tracking your phone for the last few hours, Eikeland. We know which part of town he’s in. And it isn’t in Oppsal. You’re lying: fact. Or to put it another way: five.’

A bleep. Oystein squeezed his eyes shut. The bleeping would not stop. Was he dead already? The bleeps formed a tune. Purple Rain. Prince. It was the digital ringtone of a mobile phone.

‘Yes, what’s up?’ the voice behind him said.

Oystein didn’t dare open his eyes.

‘At Underwater? Five o’clock? OK, get all the guys together immediately. I’m on my way.’

Oystein heard the rustle of clothing behind him. His hour had come. He heard a bird singing outside. A beautiful high trill. He didn’t even know what kind of bird it was. He should have known. Now he would never know. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder.

Oystein tentatively opened his eyes and peered in the mirror.

A flash of white teeth and then the voice with the same undertone of glee: ‘City centre, driver. Step on it.’