Death In Oslo

XI

Adam Stubo stood by the lifts on the third floor of the police headquarters, feeling anxious. He still hadn’t had the opportunity to phone home. The sense of apprehension that he had done something wrong by sneaking out of the sleeping house first thing that morning, without speaking to Johanne, got stronger with every hour that passed.

Warren Scifford must have eaten an enormous breakfast, as he had declined the offer of lunch twice. Adam was starving and had started to be irritated by the American’s apparently random visits to various offices at Grønlandsleiret 44. The man was communicating less and less with his Norwegian liaison. Sometimes he excused himself to make a phone call, but then moved too far away for Adam to catch any of the conversation. As he never knew how long Warren would be on the phone, he couldn’t take the opportunity to try to get hold of Johanne.

‘Have to go,’ Warren said and closed his mobile phone as he rushed over to Adam.

‘Where to now?’

Adam had been waiting for him for nearly quarter of an hour. But he still tried to be friendly.

‘I don’t need you. Not right now. I have to go back to the hotel. What’s your phone number?’

Adam took out a business card.

‘My mobile,’ he said, pointing. ‘Ring that number when you need me. Should I take you there? Call a car?’

‘The embassy has already sent one,’ Warren said lightly. ‘Thanks for all your help. So far.’

Then he ran towards the stairs and disappeared.

‘Adam? Adam Stubo?

A petite, slim woman walked over to him. Adam immediately noticed her shoes. The heels were so high that it was difficult to understand how she stayed on her feet. Her face lit up when she saw that it was really him. She stood up on her toes and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

‘What a lovely surprise.’ Adam’s smile was genuine this time. ‘It’s been a long time, Silje. How are you?’

‘Pah…’ She inflated her cheeks and then let the air out slowly.

‘It’s very busy here, you know. Everyone’s working on the President’s case. I’ve been here for over twenty-four hours now, and I’ll be lucky if I get away within the next six or so. And you?’

‘Yeah, fine. I…’

Silje Sørensen looked up at him suddenly, as if she had just seen a new side of the handsome man who looked like he had been forced into a slightly too tight jacket. Adam stopped himself, at a loss, and pulled his nose.

‘Adam, you worked on the Munch thefts, didn’t you?’ she asked quickly. ‘And the Norwegian Cash Service robbery?’

‘Yes and no,’ Adam replied and looked around. ‘I worked on the Munch case, but not directly with the NOKAS robbery. But I-’

‘You know a lot about the armed robbery league. More than most, at least.’

‘Yes, I’ve worked with-’

‘Come with me!’

Police Sergeant Silje Sørensen took him by the arm and started to walk. He followed without really wanting to. The feeling of being treated like a stray dog mushroomed. He had himself worked in the police HQ when he was younger, but had never felt at home there, and he had no idea where Silje was taking him.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, out of breath, as she hurried down the corridor, her heels clacking on the floor.

‘To be honest, I’m not sure myself.’

‘No one’s sure of anything these days.’ She smiled.

They finally stopped outside a blue door with no name on it. Silje Sørensen knocked, then opened the door without waiting for an answer. Adam followed her in. A middle-aged man was sitting in front of three monitors and something that looked like a sound studio mixing desk. He swung round and muttered hello before turning back and concentrating on his work again.

‘This is Detective Chief Inspector Adam Stubo, from the NCIS,’ Silje explained.

‘The New NCIS,’ Adam corrected her, with a smile.

‘Stupid name,’ grumbled the man by the mixing desk. ‘Frank Larsen’s the name. Police Sergeant.’

He didn’t hold out his hand and his eyes were still glued to the monitors. Black-and-white images from a petrol station, with customers coming and going, were being shown fast-forward on the screen.

‘There aren’t many people who know as much about the armed robbery brigade here in Østlandet as Adam,’ Silje Sørensen said, pulling two chairs up to the large table. ‘Sit down, Adam.’

Sergeant Larsen seemed more interested now. He gave Adam a brief smile, while his fingers danced across the keyboard. The screen went blank, and a few seconds later a new image appeared: a man who was leaving the shop through an open sliding door. The camera must have been mounted on the ceiling, as the man could only be seen at an angle, from above. He just about collided with the newspaper stand, and then pulled his cap further down on his forehead.

‘We haven’t managed to systematise the questioning of witnesses yet,’ Silje said in a low voice, while the sergeant manipulated the picture to make it clearer. ‘But there’s at least one thing that strikes me. This man, or these men – we currently think there are two – want to be noticed by the people working in the petrol station. He’s chatted with the assistant and made himself obvious. But he doesn’t want to get caught on camera. We don’t have a single clear picture of his face – or their faces, to be precise.’

Frank Larsen pulled up another picture on a second monitor.

‘Look.’ He pointed. ‘He obviously knows where the cameras are. He pulls down his hat, here…’ All three of them looked at the monitor that was marked A. ‘And then looks away, here.’

Monitor B showed a man almost sidling up to the counter.

‘If they know where the cameras are, they’ve been there before.’ Adam spoke quietly, and stared in fascination at Monitor C, where an unclear, grainy picture of a man was gradually becoming sharper. It was filmed from behind, at an angle. The peak of his cap covered most of his face, but his chin and big nose were visible. It was too early to say for definite, but Adam was sure he could make out a trimmed beard.

‘And if they’ve done a recce beforehand,’ he continued, ‘there should be better pictures from previous visits.’

‘Hardly,’ Frank Larsen said sullenly, as if the thought of going through even more material depressed him. ‘The stations generally delete them after a couple of weeks. Every crook knows that. These guys too, no doubt. So all you have to do is have a look around well in advance, that’s it. There’s this one too, by the way.’

A pudgy finger touched a button on Monitor C.

The man in the picture was broad-shouldered, and sure enough, his chin was covered by a short, trimmed beard. His eyes were hidden by the peak of his cap, but it did not cover his unusually large and hooked nose. The man had a crew cut under his cap, and a small solid gold earring in his right ear.

‘I’m sure I’ve seen him before,’ Silje said. ‘And something tells me that it’s to do with the armed robbery. But it-’

‘He’s cut his hair,’ Adam said and pulled his chair closer to the table. ‘And grown a beard. The earring’s new, as well. The only problem is…’ he was smiling now, and ran his finger over the screen, ‘you can’t disguise that nose.’

‘D’you know who it is?’ Frank Larsen sounded sceptical. ‘It’s not as if you can see a lot of the guy.’

‘It’s Gerhard Skrøder,’ Adam said and leant back in his chair. ‘They call him the Chancellor. He’s such a big mouth about town that for a while we thought he was involved in the NOKAS robbery. But it was just boasting in the end. The Munch paintings, on the other hand…’

Frank Larsen’s fingers were working while Adam spoke. A printer in the corner of the room started to rumble.

‘We’ve never managed to get anything on him, but if you ask me, he was involved.’

Silje Sørensen got the printout and studied it for a moment before passing it to Adam.

‘Still certain?’

It was not a good picture, but with all the clever computer manipulation, it was at least clear. Adam nodded and again ran his finger over the picture. The huge nose, broken in a fight in prison in 2000, and then again in a scuffle with the police two years later, was unmistakable.

Gerhard Skrøder came from an apparently good home and was a notorious thief. His father was a top executive in a large public organisation and his mother was an MP for the Socialist Left Party. Gerhard’s sister was a corporate lawyer, and his younger brother had just been selected for the national athletics team. Gerhard himself had been sprinting from the police since he was thirteen, but generally lost the race.

The Norwegian Cash Service, or NOKAS, robbery in Stavanger the year before was the biggest armed robbery in Norwegian history, and cost one policeman his life. Never before had so many resources been poured into one case, and they got results. The court case started after Christmas. Gerhard Skrøder had been in the spotlight for some time, but then fell out of it again towards the end of the winter. But as the NOKAS investigation turned the whole armed robbery scene upside down, his name popped up in other, almost equally interesting, connections. When the Munch paintings The Scream and Madonna were stolen in broad daylight in August 2004, Gerhard Skrøder was in Mauritius with an eighteen-year-old blonde who had no criminal record. And it could be proved. Adam was convinced that the man had played a key role in the planning. And that could not be proved.

‘Let me see,’ Frank Larsen said and held out his hand for the printout.

He studied it for a long time.

‘I choose to believe you,’ he said finally, and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. ‘But can you tell me why a guy from the armed robbery league would be involved in a cover-up operation for the kidnapping of the American president?’ He looked at Adam with red eyes. ‘Can you tell me that, eh? Kidnapping the American president is not exactly what these boys normally get up to, is it? They only think about one thing, those guys, and that’s money. And as far as I know, there haven’t been any bloody demands yet, not a bloody-’

‘You’re wrong,’ Adam interrupted. ‘They don’t only think about money. They also think about… kudos. But you’re probably right about one thing. I don’t believe that they’ve kidnapped the American president. In fact, I don’t think that Gerhard Skrøder knows anything about the case. He was just doing a well-paid job, I should imagine. But you can ask him. Those boys…’ he looked at the picture again, ‘they’ve made choices that mean that we know where they are at any given time. It shouldn’t take more than an hour to haul him in.’

He patted his stomach, pulled a face and added: ‘And now I must have something to eat. Good luck!’

His phone started ringing. He glanced down at the display and then bolted out into the corridor to take the call, without even saying goodbye.