Phantom

5

‘I just want to see them. I won’t take anything,’ Harry said.

The duty officer behind the counter at the custody block eyed Harry and wavered.

‘Come on, Tore, you know me.’

Nilsen cleared his throat. ‘Yeah, but are you working here again, Harry?’

Harry shrugged.

Nilsen tilted his head and lowered his eyelids until his pupils were only half visible. As though he were filtering the optical impression. Filtering out what was unimportant. And what was left evidently fell in Harry’s favour.

Nilsen released a heavy sigh, disappeared and returned with a drawer. As Harry had assumed, the items found on Oleg when he was arrested were held there. Only when it was decided prisoners would be on remand for longer than a couple of days were they moved down to Botsen, but personal effects weren’t always transferred.

Harry studied the contents. Coins. A ring with two keys, a skull and a Slayer badge. A Swiss army knife with one blade and the rest screwdrivers and Allen keys. A throwaway lighter. And one more object.

It shook Harry, even though he already knew. The newspapers had called it ‘a drugs showdown’.

It was a disposable syringe, still in its plastic wrapper.

‘Is that all?’ Harry asked, taking the key ring. He held it under the counter as he scrutinised the keys. Nilsen clearly did not like Harry holding anything out of his sight and leaned over.

‘No wallet?’ Harry asked. ‘No bank card or ID?’

‘Doesn’t seem so.’

‘Could you check the contents list for me?’

Nilsen picked up the folded list at the bottom of the drawer, fiddled around with his glasses and looked at the sheet. ‘There was a mobile phone, but they took it. Probably wanted to see if he had rung the victim.’

‘Mm,’ Harry said. ‘Anything else?’

‘What else should there be?’ Nilsen said, skimming the sheet. And concluded he had checked everything. ‘Nope.’

‘Thanks, that was all. Thanks for your help, Nilsen.’

Nilsen nodded slowly. Still wearing his glasses. ‘Keys.’

‘Yes, right.’ Harry put them back in the drawer. Watched Nilsen making sure there were still two.

Harry left, crossed the car park and went into Akebergveien. Continued down to Toyen and Urtegata. Little Karachi. Small greengrocers, hijabs and old men on plastic chairs outside their cafes. And to the Watchtower, the Salvation Army cafe for the town’s down-and-outs. Harry knew that on days like today it would be quiet, but as soon as winter and the cold came they would be flocking round the tables. Coffee and freshly made sandwiches. A set of clean clothes, the previous year’s fashion, blue trainers from the army surplus store. In the sickroom on the first floor: attend to the latest wounds from the narcotic battlefields or — if the situation was dire — a vitamin B injection. Harry considered for a moment whether to drop in on Martine. Perhaps she was still working there. A poet had once written that after the great love there were minor ones. She had been one of the minor ones. But that was not the reason. Oslo was not big, and the heavy users gathered either here or at the Mission Cafe in Skippergata. It was not improbable that she had known Gusto Hanssen. And Oleg.

However, Harry decided to take things in the right order, and started to walk again. Passed the Akerselva. He looked down from the bridge. The brown water Harry remembered from his childhood was as pure as a mountain stream. It was said you could catch trout in it now. There they were, on the paths either side of the river: the dope dealers. Everything was new. Everything was the same.

He went up Hausmanns gate. Passed Jakobskirke. Followed the house numbers. A sign for the Theatre of Cruelty. A graffiti-covered door with a smiley. A burnt-down house, open, cleared. And there it was. A typical Oslo tenement building, built in the 1800s, pale, sober, four storeys. Harry pushed the front door, which opened. Not locked. It led straight to the stairway. Which smelt of piss and refuse.

Harry noted the coded tagging on the way up the floors. Loose banisters. Doors bearing the scars of smashed locks with newer, stronger and additional ones in place. On the second floor he stopped and knew he had found the crime scene. Orange-and-white tape criss-crossing the door.

He put his hand into his pocket and took out the two keys he had removed from Oleg’s key ring while Nilsen was reading the checklist. Harry wasn’t sure which of his own keys he had used to replace them, but Hong Kong was not, after all, the hardest place to have new ones made.

One key was an Abus, which Harry knew was a padlock since he had once bought one himself. But the other was a Ving. He inserted it in the lock. It went half in, then stopped. He pushed harder. Tried twisting.

‘Shit.’

He took out his mobile phone. Her number was listed in his contacts as B. As there were only eight names stored, one letter was enough.

‘Lonn.’

What Harry liked best about Beate Lonn, apart from the fact that she was one of the two best forensics officers he had worked with, was that she always reduced information to the basics, and that — like Harry — she never weighed a case down with superfluous words.

‘Hi, Beate. I’m in Hausmanns gate.’

‘The crime scene? What are you doing…?’

‘I can’t get in. Have you got the key?’

‘Have I got the key?’

‘You’re in charge of the whole shebang up there, aren’t you?’

‘Course I’ve got the key. But I’ve no intention of giving it to you.’

‘Course not. But there are a couple of things you’ve got to double-check at the crime scene, aren’t there? I remember something about a guru saying that in murder cases a forensics officer can never be thorough enough.’

‘So you remember that, do you.’

‘It was the first thing she said to all her trainees. I suppose I can join you and see how you work.’

‘Harry…’

‘I won’t touch anything.’

Silence. Harry knew he was exploiting her. She was more than a colleague, she was a friend, but most important of all: she was herself a mother.

She sighed. ‘Give me twenty.’

Saying ‘minutes’ for her was superfluous.

Saying thank you for him was superfluous. So Harry rang off.

Officer Truls Berntsen walked slowly through the corridors of Orgkrim. Because it was his experience that the slower his steps the faster time went. And if there was anything he had enough of it was time. Awaiting him in the office was a worn chair and a small desk with a pile of reports that were there mostly for appearances’ sake. A computer he used mostly for surfing, but even that had become boring after there had been a crackdown on which websites they could visit. And since he worked with narc and not sexual offences he could soon find himself having to give an explanation. Officer Berntsen carried the brimful cup of coffee through the door to the desk. Paid attention not to spill it on the brochure for the new Audi Q5. 218 horsepower. SUV, but not a Paki car. Bandit car. Left the Volvo V70 patrol car standing. A car that showed you were someone. Showed her, she of the new house in Hoyenhall, that you were someone. Not a nobody.

Keeping the status quo. That was the focus now. We’ve achieved definite gains, Mikael had said at the general meeting on Monday. Which meant: make sure no one new gets their oar in. ‘We can always wish there were even fewer narcotics on the streets. But having achieved so much in such a short time there is always the danger of a relapse. Remember Hitler and Moscow. We shouldn’t bite off more than we can chew.’

Officer Berntsen knew in rough terms what that meant. Long days with your feet on the desk.

Sometimes he longed to be back at Kripos. Murder was not like narc, it wasn’t politics, it was just solving a case, period. But Mikael Bellman himself had insisted Truls should accompany him from Bryn to Police HQ, said he needed allies down there in enemy territory, someone he could trust, someone who could cover his flank if he was attacked. Said it without saying it: the way Mikael had covered Truls’s flank. As in the recent case of the boy on remand with whom Truls had been a bit heavy-handed and who, so terribly unfortunate, had received an injury to the face. Mikael had given Truls a bollocking, of course, said he hated police violence, didn’t want to see it in his department, said that now, alas, it was his responsibility as boss to report Truls to the police lawyer, then she would assess whether it should go further to the Special Unit. But the boy’s eyesight had returned to almost normal, Mikael had dealt with the boy’s solicitor, the charge of possessing drugs had been dropped, and nothing happened after that.

The same as nothing happened here.

Long days with feet on the desk.

And that was where Truls was about to put them — as he did at least ten times a day — when he looked out onto Bots Park and the old linden tree in the middle of the avenue leading up to the prison.

It had been put up.

The red poster.

He felt his skin tingle, his pulse rise. And his mood.

In a flash he was up, his jacket was on and his coffee abandoned.

Gamlebyen Church was a brisk eight-minute walk from Police HQ. Truls Berntsen walked down Oslo gate to Minne Park, left over Dyvekes Bridge and he was in the heart of Oslo, where the town had originated. The church was unadorned to the point of appearing poor, without any of the trite ornaments on the new Romantic church by Police HQ. But Gamlebyen Church had a more exciting history. At least if half of what his grandmother had told him during his childhood in Manglerud was true. The Berntsen family had moved from a dilapidated city-centre block to the satellite town of Manglerud when it was constructed at the end of the 1950s. But, strangely enough, it was them — the genuine Oslo family with Berntsen workers spanning three generations — who felt like immigrants. For most people in the satellite towns were farmers or people who came to town from far away to create a new life. And when Truls’s father got drunk in the seventies and the eighties and sat in their flat shouting at everyone and everything, Truls fled to his best — and only — friend, Mikael. Or down to his grandmother in Gamlebyen. She had told him that Gamlebyen Church had been built on top of a monastery from the 1200s, in which the monks had locked themselves away from the Black Death to pray, though folk said it was to escape their Christian duty to tend the contagion carriers. When, after eight months without a sign of life, the Chancellor broke down the doors of the monastery, rats were feasting on the monks’ rotting bodies.

His grandmother’s favourite bedtime story was about when a lunatic asylum — known locally as ‘The Madhouse’ — was built on the same site, and some of the inmates complained that hooded men were walking the corridors at night. And that when one of the hoods was ripped off, a pale face was seen, with rat bites and empty eye sockets. But the story Truls liked best was the one about Askild Oregod, Askild Good Ears. He lived and died more than a hundred years ago, at the time Kristiania, as Oslo was known then, became a proper town, and a church had long existed on the site. It was said that his ghost walked the cemetery, adjacent streets, the harbour district and Kvadraturen. But never further because he had only one leg and needed to get back to his grave before light, his grandmother said. Askild Oregod had lost his leg under the wheel of a fire wagon when he was three, but Truls’s grandmother said the fact that they gave him a nickname based on his large ears instead was an example of Oslo East humour. They were hard times, and for a child with one leg the choice of occupation was fairly obvious. So Askild Oregod begged and became a familiar sight hobbling through the burgeoning town, always friendly and always ready for a chat. And in particular with those sitting in pubs during the day. Without a job. Yet sometimes they suddenly had money in their hands. Then the odd coin often came Askild’s way as well. But occasionally Askild needed a bit more, and then he would tell the police which of them had been extra generous of late. And who, well into the fourth glass, and — unsuspecting of the harmless beggar on the periphery — told others that they had been offered the chance to rob the goldsmith in Karl Johans gate, or a timber merchant in Drammen. Rumours began to spread that Askild’s ears were indeed good, and after a gang of robbers in Kampen were arrested, Askild disappeared. He was never seen again, but one winter’s morning, on the steps of Gamlebyen Church, a crutch and two severed ears appeared. Askild had been buried somewhere in the graveyard, but as no priest had pronounced his blessing, his spirit still walked abroad. And after the onset of night, in Kvadraturen or around the church, you could bump into a man, hobbling with his cap pulled well over his head, begging for two ore. And then it was bad luck not to give the beggar a coin.

That was what his grandmother had told him. Nevertheless, Truls Berntsen ignored the lean beggar with the foreign coat and tanned skin sitting by the cemetery gate, strode down the gravel between the gravestones as he counted, turned left when he got to seven, to the right when he got to three and stopped by the fourth gravestone.

The name carved into the gravestone meant nothing to him. A. C. Rud. He had died as Norway gained its independence in 1905, only twenty-nine years old, but apart from the name and the dates there was no text, no imperative to rest in peace, nor any other winged words. Perhaps because the coarse gravestone was so small. But the blank, rough surface of the stone meant it was perfect for chalking messages, which must have been why they chose it.

LTZHUSCRDTO RNBU

Truls deciphered the text, using the simple code they had developed so that casual passers-by wouldn’t understand. He began at the end, and read the letters in pairs, moving backwards along the line until he reached the final three letters.

BURN TORD SCHULTZ

Truls Berntsen didn’t write it down. Didn’t need to. He had a good memory for names that brought him closer to the leather seats in an Audi Q5 2.0 6-speed manual. He used his jacket sleeve to erase the letters.

The beggar looked up as Truls passed on his way out. Brown doggy eyes. There was probably a band of beggars and a big, fat car waiting somewhere. Mercedes, wasn’t that what they liked? The church bell rang. According to the price list, a Q5 cost 666,000 kroner. If there was a hidden message in those figures, it went way over Truls Berntsen’s head.

‘You look good,’ Beate said as she inserted the key into the lock. ‘Got a new finger, as well.’

‘Made in Hong Kong,’ Harry said, rubbing the short titanium stump.

He observed the small, pale woman as she unlocked the door. The short, thin, blonde hair held in a band. Her skin so fragile and transparent that he could see the fine network of veins in her temple. She reminded him of the hairless mice they used in experiments for cancer research.

‘As you wrote that Oleg was living at the crime scene I thought his keys would give me access.’

‘That lock was probably destroyed ages ago,’ Beate said, pushing the door open. ‘You just walked straight in. We had this lock fitted so that none of the addicts would come back and contaminate the scene.’

Harry nodded. It was typical of crack dens. No point having a lock, they were destroyed immediately. First of all, junkies broke into places where they knew the occupants might have drugs. Second, even those who lived there stole from each other.

Beate pulled the tape to the side, and Harry squeezed in. Clothes and plastic bags hung from hooks in the hall. Harry peered into one of the bags. Paper towel rolls, empty beer cans, a wet bloodstained T-shirt, bits of aluminium foil, a cigarette packet. Against one wall was a stack of Grandiosa boxes, a leaning tower of pizza that rose halfway to the ceiling. Four identical white coat stands. Harry was puzzled until he realised they were probably stolen goods they had been unable to convert into cash. He remembered that in junkie flats they were forever coming across things someone had thought they could sell at some point. In one place they had found sixty hopelessly out-of-date mobile phones in a bag, in another a partly dismantled moped parked in the kitchen.

Harry stepped into the sitting room. It smelt of a mixture of sweat, beer-soaked wood, wet ash and something sweet which Harry was unable to identify. The room had no furniture in any conventional sense. Four mattresses lay on the floor as if round a campfire. From one protruded a piece of wire bent at ninety degrees, shaped into a Y at the end. The square of wood floor between the mattresses was black with scorch marks around an empty ashtray. Harry assumed the SOC unit had emptied it.

‘Gusto was by the kitchen wall, here,’ Beate said. She had stopped in the doorway between the sitting room and kitchen, and was pointing.

Instead of going into the kitchen Harry stayed by the door and looked around. This was a habit. Not the habit of forensics officers, who worked the scene from the outside, started the fine-combing on the periphery and then made their way bit by bit towards the body. Nor was it the habit of a uniformed officer or a patrol car cop, the first police on the scene, who were aware they might contaminate the evidence with their own prints or, worse, destroy the ones there were. Beate’s people had done what had to be done ages ago. This was the habit of the investigating detective. Who knows he has only one chance to let his sensory impressions, the almost imperceptible details, do their own talking, leave their prints before the cement sets. It had to happen now, before the analytical part of the brain resumed its functioning, the part that demanded fully formulated facts. Harry used to define intuition as simple, logical conclusions drawn from normal impressions that the brain was unable, or too slow, to convert into something comprehensible.

This crime scene, however, did not tell Harry much about the murder that had taken place.

All he saw, heard and smelt was a place with floating tenants who gathered, took drugs, slept, on the rare occasion ate and, after a while, drifted off. To another squat, to a room in a hostel, a park, a container, a cheap down sleeping bag under a bridge or a white wooden resting place beneath a gravestone.

‘Of course we had to do a fair bit of clearing up here,’ Beate said in answer to a question he had not needed to ask. ‘There was rubbish everywhere.’

‘Dope?’

‘A plastic bag containing unboiled wads of cotton wool.’

Harry nodded. The most tortured or destitute junkies would save the cotton wool they used to cleanse the impurities from the dope as they drew it into the syringe. Then, on rainy days, the cotton wool could be boiled and the brew injected. ‘Plus a condom filled with semen and heroin.’

‘Oh?’ Harry raised an eyebrow. ‘Any good?’

Harry saw her blush, an echo of the shy policewoman fresh out of college he still remembered.

‘Remains of heroin, to be precise. We assume the condom was used to store it, and then after it was consumed, the condom was used for its primary purpose.’

‘Mm,’ Harry said. ‘Junkies who worry about contraception. Not bad. Did you find out who…?’

‘The DNA from inside and outside the condom match two old acquaintances. A Swedish girl and Ivar Torsteinsen, better known to undercover men as Hivar.’

‘Hivar?’

‘Used to threaten police with infected needles, claimed he had HIV.’

‘Mm, explains the condom. Any violence on his record?’

‘No. Just hundreds of burglaries, possession and dealing. Plus a bit of smuggling.’

‘But threatened murder with a syringe?’

Beate sighed and stepped into the sitting room, her back to him. ‘Sorry, Harry, but there are no loose threads in this case.’

‘Oleg has never hurt a fly, Beate. He simply doesn’t have it in him. While this Hivar-’

‘Hivar and the Swedish girl are… well, they have been eliminated from inquiries, you might say.’

Harry looked at her back. ‘Dead?’

‘OD’d. A week before the murder. Impure heroin mixed with fentanyl. I suppose they couldn’t afford violin.’

Harry let his gaze run around the walls. Most serious addicts without a fixed abode had a stash or two, a secret place where they could hide or lock up a reserve supply of drugs. Sometimes money. Possibly other priceless possessions. Carrying these things around with you was out of the question, a homeless junkie had to shoot up in public places and the moment the dope kicked in, he was prey to vultures. For that reason stashes were sacred. An otherwise lifeless addict could invest so much energy and imagination in hiding his gear that even veteran searchers and sniffer dogs failed to find it. Addicts never revealed hiding places to anyone, not even to best friends. Because they knew, knew from experience, that no one could ever be closer than codeine, morphine or heroin.

‘Have you looked for a stash here?’

Beate shook her head.

‘Why not?’ Harry asked, knowing it was a stupid question.

‘Because I presume we would have had to rip the flat apart to find anything, and it wouldn’t have been relevant to the investigation anyway,’ Beate said patiently. ‘Because we have to prioritise limited resources. And because we had the evidence we needed.’

Harry nodded. The answer he deserved.

‘And the evidence?’ he asked in a soft voice.

‘We believe the killer fired from where I’m standing now.’ It was a custom among forensics officers not to use names. She stretched out her arm in front of her. ‘At close quarters. Less than a metre. Soot in and around the entry wounds.’

‘Plural?’

‘Two shots.’

She eyed him with a sympathetic expression that said she knew what he was thinking: there went the defence counsel’s chance to maintain the gun had gone off by accident.

‘Both shots entered his chest.’ Beate spread the first and middle fingers of her right hand and placed them against the left side of her blouse, as though using sign language. ‘Assuming that both victim and killer were standing and the killer fired the weapon on instinct, the first exit wound reveals that he was between one eighty and one eighty-five. The suspect is one eighty-three.’

Jesus. He thought of the boy he had seen by the Visitors’ Room door. It seemed like only yesterday when they used to wrestle each other and Oleg had barely reached up to Harry’s chest.

She walked back into the kitchen. Pointed to the wall beside a greasy stove.

‘The bullets went in here and here, as you can see. Which is consistent with the second shot following the first quite quickly as the victim fell. The initial bullet punctured a lung, the second passed through the top of his chest nicking a shoulder blade. The victim-’

‘Gusto Hanssen,’ Harry said.

Beate stopped. Looked at him. Nodded. ‘Gusto Hanssen did not die at once. His fingerprints were in the pool of blood and there was blood on his clothes, showing that he moved after he fell. But it can’t have taken long.’

‘I see. And what…?’ Harry ran a hand over his face. He would have to try to get a few hours’ sleep. ‘What ties Oleg to the murder?’

‘Two people rang the switchboard at three minutes to nine saying they had heard what might have been gunshots coming from the block. One lived in Mollergata, over the crossing, the other just opposite here.’

Harry squinted through the grimy window looking out onto Hausmanns gate. ‘Not bad going, being able to hear from one block to another in the very centre of the city.’

‘Don’t forget it was July. Warm evening. All the windows are open, Summer holidays, barely any traffic. The neighbours had been trying to get the police to close this nest, so the threshold for reporting noise was low, one might say. The officer in the Ops Room told them to stay calm and asked them to keep an eye on the block until patrol cars arrived. The uniforms were alerted at once. Two cars arrived at twenty past nine and took up position while waiting for the cavalry.’

‘Delta?’

‘Always takes the boys a bit of time to don helmets and armour. Then the patrol cars were informed by Ops that the neighbours had seen a boy leaving by the front door and walking round the block, down towards the Akerselva. So two officers went down to the river, and there they found…’

She paused until she received an almost imperceptible nod from Harry.

‘… Oleg. He didn’t resist, he was so doped up he hardly knew what he was doing. We found gunshot residue on his right hand and arm.’

‘Murder weapon?’

‘Since it’s an unusual calibre, a nine-by-eighteen-millimetre Makarov, there are not many alternatives.’

‘Well, the Makarov is the favourite gun for organised crime in former Soviet countries. And the Fort 12, which is used by the police in Ukraine. Plus a couple more.’

‘True. We found the empty cartridges on the floor with powder residue. The Makarov powder has a different mix of saltpetre and sulphur, and they also use a bit of spirit, like in sulphurless powder. The chemical compound of the powder on the empty cartridge and around the entry wound matches the residue on Oleg’s hand.’

‘Mm. And the weapon?’

‘Hasn’t been recovered. We had divers and teams searching in and around the river, with no success. That doesn’t mean the gun isn’t there, with all the mud and sludge… well, you know.’

‘I know.’

‘Two of the guys who lived here said that Oleg was flashing a pistol and boasting it was the type the Russian mafia used. Neither of them is gun-savvy, but after being shown pictures of about a hundred guns both are supposed to have picked out an Odessa. And it uses, as you probably know…’

Harry nodded. Makarov, nine by eighteen millimetre. It was unmistakable. The first time he had seen an Odessa, he had been reminded of the old futuristic-looking pistol on the cover of Foo Fighters, one of many CDs that had ended up with Rakel and Oleg.

‘And I assume they’re rock-solid witnesses with only a tiny little drug problem?’

Beate didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Harry knew she knew what he was doing, grasping at straws.

‘And Oleg’s blood and urine samples,’ Harry said, straightening his jacket sleeves, as if it were important, here and now, that they didn’t ride up. ‘What did they reveal?’

‘Violin was an active ingredient. Being high might be seen as a mitigating circumstance of course.’

‘Mm. That presupposes he was high before he shot Gusto Hanssen. But what about the motive then?’

Beate sent Harry a vacant stare. ‘The motive?’

He knew what she was thinking: is it possible to imagine one addict killing another for anything other than dope? ‘If Oleg was already high why would he kill anyone?’ he asked. ‘Drug-related murders like this one are as a rule a spontaneous, desperate act, motivated by a craving for drugs or the start of withdrawal symptoms.’

‘Motive’s your department,’ Beate said. ‘I’m in Forensics.’

Harry breathed in. ‘OK. Anything else?’

‘I imagined you would want to see the photos,’ Beate said, opening a slim leather case.

Harry took the pile of photographs. The first thing to strike him was Gusto’s beauty. There was no other expression for it. Handsome, attractive didn’t cover it. Even dead, with closed eyes and his shirt soaked in blood, Gusto Hanssen still had the indefinable but evident beauty of a young Elvis Presley, the kind of looks that appeal to both men and women, like the androgynous beautification of idols you find in every religion. He thumbed through. After several full-length shots the photographer had taken close-ups of the face and the bullet wounds.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing to a picture of Gusto’s right hand.

‘He had blood under his fingernails. We took swabs, but I’m afraid they were destroyed.’

‘Destroyed?’

‘It can happen, Harry.’

‘Not in your department.’

‘The blood was destroyed on the way to DNA testing in the Pathology Unit. In fact, we weren’t that upset. The blood was quite fresh, but still congealed enough for it not to be relevant to the time of the murder. And, inasmuch as the victim was a needle addict, it was highly probable it was his own. But…’

‘… But if not, it’s always interesting to know who he had been fighting with that day. Look at his shoes…’ He showed Beate one of the full-length shots. ‘Aren’t they Alberto Fascianis?’

‘Had no idea you knew so much about shoes, Harry.’

‘One of my clients in Hong Kong manufactures them.’

‘Client, eh? And to my knowledge original Fasciani shoes are manufactured only in Italy.’

Harry shrugged. ‘Impossible to see the difference. But if they are Fascianis they don’t exactly match the rest of his clothes. Looks like an outfit doled out by the Watchtower.’

‘The shoes could be stolen,’ Beate said. ‘Gusto Hanssen’s nickname was the Thief. He was famous for stealing anything he came across, not least dope. There’s a story going round that he stole a retired sniffer dog in Sweden and used it to sniff out drug stashes.’

‘Perhaps he found Oleg’s,’ Harry said. ‘Has he said anything under questioning?’

‘Still as silent as a clam. The only thing he says is it’s all a black void. He doesn’t even remember being in the flat.’

‘Perhaps he wasn’t.’

‘We found his DNA, Harry. Hair, sweat.’

‘He did live and sleep here.’

‘On the body, Harry.’

Harry fell silent, stared into the distance.

Beate raised a hand, perhaps to put on his shoulder, but changed her mind and let it drop. ‘Have you had a chat with him?’

Harry shook his head. ‘He threw me out.’

‘He’s ashamed.’

‘Guess so.’

‘I mean it. You’re his idol. It’s humiliating for him to be seen in this state.’

‘Humiliating? I’ve dried the boy’s tears, I’ve blown on his grazes. Chased away trolls and left the light on.’

‘That boy no longer exists, Harry. The present Oleg doesn’t want to be helped by you now; he wants to live up to you.’

Harry stamped on the floorboards while looking at the wall. ‘I’m not worth it, Beate. He knows that.’

‘Harry…’

‘Shall we go down to the river?’

Sergey stood in front of the mirror with both arms hanging down by his sides. Flicked the safety catch and pressed the button. The blade shot out and reflected the light. It was an attractive knife, a Siberian switchblade, or ‘the iron’ as the urkas — the criminal class in Siberia — called it. It was the world’s best weapon to stab with. A long, slim shaft with a long, thin blade. The tradition was that you were given it from an older criminal in the family when you had done something to deserve it. However, traditions were receding; nowadays you bought, stole or pirated the knife. This knife, though, had been a present from his uncle. According to Andrey, ataman had kept the knife under his mattress before it was given to Sergey. He thought about the myth that if you put the iron under the mattress of a sick person it absorbed the pain and suffering and transferred them to the next person stabbed with it. This was one of the myths the urkas loved so much, like the one that claimed if anyone came into the possession of your knife he would soon meet with an accident and death. Old romanticism and superstition, which were on their way out. Nonetheless, he had received the gift with enormous, perhaps exaggerated, reverence. And why shouldn’t he? He owed his uncle everything. He was the one who had got him out of the trouble he had landed in, organised his papers so that he could come to Norway; his uncle had even sorted out the cleaning job at Gardermoen for him. It was well paid, and easy to find, but apparently it was the type of work Norwegians declined; they preferred to draw social security. And the minor offences Sergey brought with him from Russia were no problem either; his uncle had had his criminal record doctored. So Sergey had kissed his benefactor’s blue ring when he was given the present. And Sergey had to admit that the knife in his hand was very beautiful. A dark brown handle made from deer horn inlaid with an ivory-coloured Orthodox cross.

Sergey pushed from the hip the way he had been taught, could feel he was properly poised, and thrust upwards. In and out. In and out. Fast, but not so fast that the blade did not enter to the hilt, each and every time.

The reason it had to be with the knife was that the man he was going to kill was a policeman. And when policemen are killed the hunt afterwards was always more intensive, so it was vital to leave as few clues as possible. A bullet could always be traced back to places, weapons or people. A slash from a smooth, clean knife was anonymous. A stabbing wasn’t quite as anonymous, it could reveal the length and shape of the blade, that was why Andrey had told him not to stab the policeman in the heart, but to cut his carotid artery. Sergey had never cut anyone’s throat before, nor stabbed anyone in the heart, just knifed a Georgian in the thigh for no more than being a Georgian. So he had decided he needed something to train on, something living. His Pakistani neighbour had three cats, and every morning he walked into the entrance hall the smell of cat piss assailed his nostrils.

Sergey lowered his knife, stood with bowed head, rolled his eyeballs upwards so that he could see himself in the mirror. He looked good: fit, menacing, dangerous, ready. Like a film poster. His tattoo would reveal that he had killed a police officer.

He would stand behind the policeman. Step forward. With his left hand he would grab his hair, pull him backwards. Place the knife tip against his neck, to the left, penetrate the skin, arc the blade across the throat in a crescent shape. Like that.

The heart would pump out a cascade of blood; three heartbeats and the flow would diminish. The man would already be brain-dead.

Fold the knife, slip it into his pocket as he left, fast, but not too fast. Don’t look anyone in the eye. Walk, and feel free.

He stepped back a pace. Stood up straight, inhaled. Visualised the scene. Released his breath. Stepped forward. Angled the blade so that it had a wonderful glint, like a precious jewel.