Death In Oslo

III

As he approached the guest room, Al Muffet looked down over the banister to the grandfather clock in the hall below. It was thirty-three minutes past midnight. He was sure he’d read somewhere that people slept most deeply between three and five in the morning. As his brother had been rather drunk that evening, Al reckoned he would already be sound asleep.

He didn’t have the patience to wait any longer.

He took care to avoid the floorboards that creaked. He was barefoot and regretted not having put on a pair of socks. The soles of his feet were moist and made a gentle sucking sound on the wooden floor. Whereas Fayed was unlikely to be disturbed by it, the girls, Louise in particular, were very light sleepers. They had been ever since their mother died at ten past three one November night.

Fortunately he had managed to pull himself together during the evening meal, when Fayed’s comment about his mother’s death had knocked him sideways for a moment or two. After a quick trip to the bathroom, where he splashed his face and hands with ice-cold water, he had been able to go back down to his brother and daughters and continue the meal with some composure. He sent the girls to bed at ten, with great protest, and was relieved when Fayed announced half an hour later that he too wanted to go to bed.

Al Muffet went up to the door behind which his brother was sleeping.

His mother had never confused her two sons.

The age difference was one reason. But Ali and Fayed had such different personalities. Al Muffet knew that his mother felt that he was much more like her, a friendly person, open to most things and most people.

Fayed was the black sheep. He was smarter than his brother at school, and in fact was one of the brightest in the whole school. But he was hopeless with his hands. His father realised early on that there was no point in forcing him to help with the odd bit of work in the garage. Little Ali, on the other hand, knew the principles behind a car engine by the time he was eight. He passed his driving test when he was sixteen, and built his own car from old parts that his father had let him have.

His brother’s sullen, suspicious nature was physically visible from an early age. He viewed the world from the corner of his eye and his furtive attitude made people doubt that he was ever really listening. He also had a slightly sideways walk, as if he was always expecting to be attacked and wanted to be ready to throw a punch, better first than last.

Their faces were, however, remarkably similar. But their mother had still never mistaken one for the other. She would never have done that, Al Muffet thought as he carefully turned the door handle.

If she had really done that, because she was only minutes away from death and could neither see nor think clearly, it could be disastrous.

The room was silent and dark. It took a few seconds for Al’s eyes to adjust.

He could see the outline of the bed against the wall. Fayed was lying on his stomach with one leg hanging over the edge of the bed and his left hand under his head. He was snoring quietly and regularly.

Al pulled a torch from his breast pocket. Before he turned it on, he checked that his brother’s suitcase was on the low chest of drawers by the door to the smallest bathroom in the house.

He shaded the beam with his hands. A small stripe of light fell on the floor, which helped Al to get to the suitcase without stumbling over anything.

It was locked.

He tried again. The code lock would not open.

Fayed gave a loud snort and turned in the bed. Al froze. He didn’t even dare to turn off the torch. He stood for several minutes listening to his brother’s breathing, which became slow and rhythmical again.

It was on ordinary medium-sized black Samsonite suitcase.

A normal code lock, Al reckoned, and rolled the numbers to his brother’s birthday. A normal lock might have the most normal code of all.

Click.

He did the same on the lock to the left. Now he could open the suitcase. He did it slowly and without a sound. It had clothes in it. Two sweaters on top, a pair of trousers, several pairs of underpants and three pairs of socks. Everything was carefully folded. Al put his hand down under the clothes and lifted them out.

At the bottom of the suitcase lay eight mobile phones, a laptop and a diary.

No one needs eight mobile phones, Al thought, unless they sell them for a living. He felt his pulse quicken. All the telephones were switched off. For a moment he was tempted to take the laptop away with him for closer investigation. He quickly dismissed that thought. It was probably full of codes that he wouldn’t be able to work out, and the risk that his brother might wake up before he managed to put the computer back was too great.

It was a black leather diary, with a strap and press stud which doubled up as a pen loop for an exclusive ballpoint pen. Al held the torch in his mouth, with the beam on the diary, and opened it.

It was an ordinary Filofax. The pages on the left-hand side were divided into the first three days of the week and the remaining four days were on the right-hand page. Sunday was given least room, and as far as Al could see, his brother never had any appointments on Sundays.

He turned the pages back and forth. The appointments didn’t tell him anything other than that his brother was a busy man. He knew that already.

In a moment of inspiration, he turned to the year planner, with only one line per day. Personally, he kept these at the back of his diary, but his brother obviously found it more useful to have them at the front. Fayed had kept the last five years’ planners. Special days and anniversaries were carefully marked. In 2003, Fayed’s family had spent the 4th of July on Sandy Hook. Labor Day 2004 was celebrated at Cape Cod with someone called the Collies.

The 11th of September 2001 was marked with a black star.

Al realised that he was sweating, even though the room was chilly. His brother was still sleeping heavily. His fingers shook as he turned to the date that his mother died. When he saw what his brother had written there, he was finally certain.

His eyes rested on the writing for a few moments. Then he closed the diary and put it back in its place. His hands were steadier now and nimble. He closed the suitcase and the locks.

Just as quietly as he’d come, he tiptoed back to the door. He stood there looking at the sleeping body, as he had so many times in his childhood, watching his sleeping brother from his bed at night, when he couldn’t sleep. The memories were so vivid. After long, exhausting days in the firing line between his parents and Fayed, Ali would sit up and watch his back as it rose and fell in the other corner of their room. Sometimes he was awake for hours. Sometimes he cried quietly. All he really wanted was to understand his defiant, wronged brother, the surly, wild teenager who always made their father so angry and their mother so desperate.

Standing there by the door of the room where his brother was sleeping, Al Muffet felt as sad now as he had back then. Once upon a time he had liked Fayed. Now he realised there was nothing left between them. He didn’t know when it had happened – at what point everything had been lost.

Perhaps it was when their mother died.

He closed the door carefully behind him. He had to think. He had to find out what his brother knew about the kidnapping of Helen Lardahl Bentley.