The Devil's star

28

Saturday. The Dildo.

Olaug Sivertsen watched Beate with big red eyes as Beate checked that she had bullets in all the chambers of her revolver.

‘My Sven? Goodness me, they have to understand they’re making a mistake! Sven wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

Beate clicked the drum of her revolver into place and went over to the kitchen window with the view out onto the car park in Schweigaards gate.

‘Let’s hope so. But to find out, first we have to arrest him.’

Beate’s heart was beating fast, but not too fast. Her fatigue vanished and was replaced by a feeling of lightness and centredness, almost as if she had been taking some kind of drug. It was her father’s old service revolver. Once she had heard him say to a colleague that you should never rely on a single-shot handgun.

‘He didn’t say what time he was coming here?’

Olaug shook her head.

‘There were a few things he had to sort out, he said.’

‘Has he got a key to the front door?’

‘No.’

‘Good. Then -’

‘I don’t usually lock it if I know he’s coming.’

‘Isn’t the door locked?’

Beate could feel the blood rushing to her head and her voice became sharp and jagged. She didn’t know who she was angrier with, the old lady who had been given police protection, but left the door open so that her son could walk right in, or herself for not having checked such an elementary thing.

She breathed in to make her voice calmer.

‘I want you to sit here, Olaug. Then I’ll go out into the hall and -’

‘Hi!’

The voice came from behind Beate and her heart beat quickly, but not too quickly, as she swung round with her right arm outstretched and her thin white finger crooked round the taut, inert trigger. A figure filled the doorway to the hall. She hadn’t even heard him. There was good and good, and stupid and stupid.

‘Wow,’ the voice said with a chuckle.

Beate had his face in the sights. She hesitated for a fraction of a second before releasing the pressure on the trigger.

‘Who’s that?’ Olaug asked.

‘The cavalry, fru Sivertsen,’ the voice said. ‘Inspector Tom Waaler.’ He put out his hand and said, with a brief glance at Beate, ‘I took the liberty of locking your front door, fru Sivertsen.’

‘Where are the rest?’ Beate asked.

‘There is no rest. It’s just…’ Beate froze as Tom Waaler added with a smile, ‘… us two, sweetie.’

It was gone 8 p.m.

On the TV the newscaster warned that a cold front was on its way across England and that the heatwave would soon be over.

In a corridor in the Post House Roger Gjendem said to a colleague that the police had been conspicuously uncommunicative the last couple of days and his guess was that something was brewing. He had heard rumours that Special Forces had been mobilised and the head, Sivert Falkeid, had not returned one single call in the last two days. His colleague thought it was wishful thinking and the editorial desk agreed. The cold front became front-page news.

Bjarne Moller was sitting on the sofa watching Beat for Beat. He liked Ivar Dyrhaug. He liked his songs. And he didn’t care if some people at work thought it was dated and too homely. He liked the home atmosphere. And again it struck him that Norway must have so many talented singers who never made it into the spotlight. This evening, however, Moller couldn’t concentrate on the lyrics and the message; he merely stared blankly as his mind went over the update he had just received from Harry on the phone.

He checked his watch and glanced over to the telephone for the fifth time in half an hour. The agreement was that Harry would ring as soon as they had something new. And the Chief Superintendent had asked for a briefing as soon as the operation was concluded. Moller wondered whether the Chief had a TV in his log cabin and whether, right now, he was sitting, like him, watching a pop quiz with the answers in his mouth but his brain elsewhere.

Otto sucked on his cigarette, closed his eyes and saw the light in the windows, heard the wind rustling in the dry leaves and felt the sinking feeling when they drew the curtains. The other tin can had been thrown in the ditch. Nils had gone home.

Otto had run out of cigarettes, but he bummed one off that police bastard called Harry. Harry pulled out a packet of Camel Light from his pocket half an hour after Waaler had gone off. A good choice, except for the Light bit. Falkeid had glowered disapprovingly when they began to smoke, but he didn’t say anything. He glimpsed Sivert Falkeid’s face through the blue mist of smoke, which also cast a compensatory veil over the irritatingly static pictures of corridors and stairs.

Harry had shoved his chair close up to Otto’s so that he could get closer to the screen. He smoked his cigarette unhurriedly while staring intensely at the pictures and studying them one by one. As if there might be something there he hadn’t noticed yet.

‘What’s that?’ Harry asked, pointing to one of the pictures on the left-hand screen.

‘There?’

‘No, higher up. On the fourth floor.’

Otto stared at a picture of yet another empty corridor with pale yellow walls.

‘I can’t see anything special,’ Otto said.

‘Over the third door on the right-hand side. In the plaster.’

Otto squinted. There were some white marks. He wondered at first if they had been made while unsuccessfully trying to mount one of the cameras, but he couldn’t remember making a hole in the wall in that particular spot.

Falkeid bent forwards. ‘What is that?’

‘Don’t know,’ Harry said. ‘Otto, could you magnify just that…?’

Otto dragged the cursor across the screen and drew a little square above the door. He held down two keys. The section above the door covered the whole of the 21-inch screen.

‘Oh my God,’ Harry mumbled.

‘Yessir, this is no mean shit,’ Otto boasted, patting the console with affection. He was beginning to take to this Harry character.

‘The devil’s star,’ Harry whispered.

‘Hey?’

But the policeman had already turned to Falkeid.

‘Ask Delta One or whatever the fuck he’s called to get ready to break into 406. Tell them to wait until they see me.’

The policeman got up and took out a gun that Otto recognised from late-night surfing on the Net. Glock 21. He didn’t know what, but he knew something was going to happen, something that might mean he got his scoop after all.

The policeman was already out the door.

‘Alpha to Delta One,’ Falkeid said and released the button on the walkie-talkie.

Noise. Lovely, crackling atmospheric noise.

Harry stopped in front of the lift inside the entrance, dithered for a second, then grasped the handle and slid open the door. His heart skipped a beat when he saw the black grille. A sliding grille.

He let the door go as if he had been burned, let it close. It was too late anyway. This was just the pathetic final spurt towards the platform when you know the train has already gone, but you would like to catch a glimpse of it before it completely disappears.

Harry took the stairs. He tried to walk calmly. When had the man been here? Two days ago? A week ago?

He couldn’t restrain himself. His shoe soles sounded like sandpaper on the stairs as he began to run. He wanted to catch a glimpse.

Just as he swung left into the corridor on the fourth floor, three black-clad figures came from the furthest end of the corridor.

Harry stood under the star carved into the wall. The whiteness shone against the yellow of the wall.

Beneath the room number – 406 – there was a name. VELAND. And beneath that a piece of paper stuck to the wall with two bits of tape.