Harry Hole 02 - Cockroaches (16 page)

‘No,’ Harry answered, and added: ‘Why the hell does everyone ask me that?’

‘Why the hell, eh?’ She wriggled on her chair. ‘I suppose it’s usually girls who ask, is it?’

He chuckled. ‘Are you trying to embarrass me? Tell me about your boyfriends.’

‘Which one?’ She kept her left hand hidden in her lap and raised her beer glass with her right. With a smile playing on her lips, she leaned back and fixed him with her eyes.

‘I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you think.’

Harry almost spat a mouthful of juice over the table.

‘Why should I be?’ she said, putting the glass to her lips.

Yes, why should you be? Harry thought.

‘Are you shocked?’ She put the beer glass down and assumed a serious expression.

‘Why should I be?’ It sounded like an echo, and he hastened to add: ‘I believe I made my debut at about your age.’

‘Yes, but not when you were thirteen,’ she said.

Harry breathed in, considered her comment carefully and slowly released air through his teeth. He would be happy to drop this subject now. ‘Really? And how old was he?’

‘That’s a secret.’ She had her teasing expression back. ‘Tell me why you don’t have a girlfriend.’

He paused for a moment before speaking, an impulse, perhaps to see if he could reciprocate the shock tactics. And tell her that the two women he could say, in all honesty, he had loved were both dead. One by her own hand, the other by a murderer’s.

‘It’s a long story,’ he said. ‘I lost them.’

‘Them? Are there several? I suppose that’s why they dumped you, was it? Two-timing?’

Harry could hear the childish excitement and laughter in her voice. He was unable to bring himself to ask what kind of relationship she had with Jens Brekke.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I just didn’t pay enough attention.’

‘Now you look serious.’

‘Sorry.’

They sat in silence. She fiddled with the label on the beer bottle. Glanced at Harry. As if trying to make up her mind. The label came off.

‘Come on,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘I’ll show you something.’

They went down the steps, between the students, along the pavement and up a narrow footbridge over the broad avenue. In the middle they stopped.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that beautiful?’

He watched the traffic streaming towards and then away from them. The road stretched as far as the eye could see, and the lights from the lorries, buses, cars, motorbikes and tuk-tuks were like a river of lava thickening into one yellow stripe at the furthest end.

‘It looks like a snake twisting and turning with a luminous pattern on its back, doesn’t it?’

She leaned over the railing. ‘Do you know what’s strange? People in Bangkok would happily kill for the little I have in my pockets at this moment. And yet I’ve never been afraid here. In Norway we always went up to our mountain cabin at the weekend. I know the cabin and all the paths blindfold. And every holiday we went to Ørsta where everyone knows everyone and shoplifting is front-page news. And yet this is where I feel safest. Here where I’m surrounded by people on all sides and I don’t know any of them. Isn’t that strange?’

Harry was unsure how to reply.

‘If I could choose I’d live here for the rest of my life. And then I’d come up here at least once a week and just stand here watching.’

‘Watching the traffic?’

‘Yes, I love the traffic.’ She turned abruptly to him. Her eyes were shining. ‘Don’t you?’

Harry shook his head. She turned back to the road.

‘Shame. Guess how many cars there are on the roads of Bangkok now? Three million. And the number increases by a thousand every day. A driver in Bangkok spends between two and three hours in a car every day. Have you heard about Comfort 100? You can buy it at petrol stations. It’s a bag to pee in when you’re stuck in a queue. Do you think Eskimos have a word for traffic? Or Maoris?’

Harry shrugged.

‘Think of all they’re missing,’ she said. ‘Those people who live in places where they can’t be surrounded by crowds like here. Hold your arm up . . .’ She held his hand and lifted it.

‘Can you feel it? The vibration? It’s the energy from everyone around us. It’s in the air. If you’re dying and you think no one can save you, just go out and stretch your arms into the air and absorb some of the energy. You can have eternal life. It’s true!’

Her eyes were glowing, her whole face was glowing, and she laid Harry’s hand against her cheek.

‘I can feel you’re going to live a long life. Immensely long. Even longer than me.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Harry said. Her skin burned against his palm. ‘That’s bad luck.’

‘Better bad luck than no luck, Pappa used to say.’

He retracted his hand.

‘Don’t you want eternal life?’ she whispered.

He blinked and knew that his brain had taken a snap of them there and then, on a footbridge with people hurrying past in both directions and a shimmering sea serpent below. Just like you take snaps of places you visit because you know you won’t be there long. He had done it before, one night in mid-jump at Frogner Lido, another night in Sydney when a red mane of hair blew backwards in the wind, and on a cold February afternoon at Fornebu Airport when Sis was waiting for him among the press photographers and the storm of camera flashes. He knew that whatever happened he would always be able to access the snaps, they would never fade; on the contrary, they would have more consistency and substance over the years.

At that moment he felt a drop on his face. And then another. He looked up in amazement.

‘I was told there was no rain before May,’ he said.

‘Mango showers,’ Runa said, turning her face to the sky. ‘We get them sometimes. It means the mangoes are ripe. Soon it’ll pelt down. Come on . . .’

Harry was falling asleep. The noise was no longer so obtrusive, and he had started to notice that there was a kind of rhythm to the traffic, a kind of predictability. The first night he would wake up to the sound of horns honking. In a few nights he would probably wake up if he
couldn’t
hear any horns honking. The racket of a broken silencer didn’t come from nowhere, it had a place in the apparent chaos. It just took a little time to adjust to it, like learning to find your sea legs on a boat.

He had arranged to meet Runa at a cafe by the university the next day to ask some questions about her father. Her hair had still been dripping when she got out of the taxi.

For the first time in a long while he dreamt about Birgitta. The hair sticking to her pale skin. But she smiled and was alive.

20

Tuesday 14 January

IT TOOK THE
lawyer four hours to have Woo released from custody.

‘Dr Ling. He works for Sorensen,’ Liz said at the morning meeting and sighed. ‘Nho only had time to ask Woo where he was on the day of the murder, then it was over.’

‘And what did the mobile lie detector get out of the answer?’ Harry asked.

‘Nothing,’ Nho said. ‘He wasn’t interested in telling us anything.’

‘Nothing? Shit, and there was me thinking you Thais were handy with water torture and electric shocks. So now there’s a giant psychopath out there who wishes me dead.’

‘Could somebody please give me some good news?’ Liz said.

A newspaper crackled.

‘I rang the Maradiz Hotel again. The first person I spoke to said there was a
farang
who used to go there with a woman from the embassy. This guy said the woman was white and they spoke to each other in a language which he thought might have been German or Dutch.’

‘Norwegian,’ Harry said.

‘I tried to get a description of the two, but they weren’t very clear.’

Liz sighed. ‘Sunthorn, drive over with some photos and see if they can identify the ambassador and his wife.’

Harry wrinkled his nose. ‘Man and wife have a love nest for two hundred dollars a day a few kilometres from where they live? Isn’t that a bit perverse?’

‘According to the man I spoke to today, they stayed there at weekends,’ Rangsan said. ‘I’ve got a few dates.’

‘I would bet yesterday’s winnings it wasn’t his wife,’ Harry said.

‘Maybe not,’ Liz said. ‘Anyway, it probably won’t get us very far.’

She concluded the meeting by telling the rest of the team to spend the day doing neglected paperwork on cases which were dropped when the murder of the Norwegian ambassador was given top priority.

‘So we’re back to square one?’ Harry asked, after the others had left.

‘We’ve been there the whole time,’ Liz said. ‘Perhaps you’ll get what you Norwegians want.’

‘What we want?’

‘I talked to our Chief of Police this morning. He had spoken to a Mr Torhus in Norway yesterday, who wanted to know how long this was going to take. The Norwegian authorities asked for some clarification this week if we didn’t have anything concrete. The Chief told him this was a Thai investigation and we didn’t shelve murder cases just like that. But later on he received a call from our Ministry of Justice. Good job we got the sightseeing done while there was time, Harry. Looks like you’ll be going home on Friday. Unless, as they said, something concrete turns up.’

‘Harry!’

Tonje Wiig met him in reception, her cheeks flushed and a smile so red he suspected she had put on some lipstick before she came out.

‘We must have some tea,’ she said. ‘Ao!’

Miss Ao had stared at him in dumb fear when he arrived, and even though he’d hastened to say his visit had nothing to do with her, he noticed her eyes, like an antelope by a watering hole, always drinking within sight of lions. She turned her back on them and left them alone.

‘Nice-looking girl,’ Tonje said, with a searching glance at Harry.

‘Lovely,’ he said. ‘Young.’

Tonje appeared content with the answer and led him into her office.

‘I tried to ring you last night,’ she said, ‘but you obviously weren’t at home.’

Harry could see she wanted him to ask why she had rung, but he refrained. Miss Ao came in with the tea, and he waited until she had gone.

‘I need some information,’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘Since you were the chargé d’affaires when the ambassador was away I assume you kept track of his absences.’

‘Naturally.’

He read out four dates to her, which she checked against her calendar. The ambassador had been to Chiang Mai three times and to Vietnam once. Harry slowly took notes as he prepared for the follow-up.

‘Did the ambassador know any Norwegian women in Bangkok apart from his wife?’

‘No . . .’ Tonje said. ‘Not as far as I know. Well, apart from me, that is.’

Harry waited until she had put down her cup before asking: ‘What would you say if I said I think you were having a relationship with the ambassador?’

Tonje Wiig’s chin dropped. She was a credit to Norwegian dental care.

‘Oh, golly gosh!’ she said. So free of irony that Harry could only assume ‘golly gosh’ still existed in some women’s vocabulary. He cleared his throat.

‘I think you and the ambassador spent the dates we just noted at the Maradiz Hotel, and if so I would like you to account for your relationship and tell me where you were the day he died.’

It was surprising that someone as pale as Tonje Wiig could turn even whiter.

‘Should I talk to a lawyer?’ she said at length.

‘Not unless you have something to hide.’

He saw a tear had formed in the corner of her eye.

‘I have nothing to hide,’ she said.

‘In which case, you should talk to me.’

She carefully dabbed her eye so as not to smudge her mascara.

‘Sometimes I felt like killing him, Officer.’

Harry noted the change in the form of address and waited patiently.

‘So much so that I was almost glad when I heard he was dead.’

He could hear that her tongue was loosening. It was important not to say or do anything stupid to stem the flow now. One confession seldom comes alone.

‘Because he didn’t want to leave his wife?’

‘No!’ She shook her head. ‘You don’t understand. Because he ruined everything for me! Everything that . . .’

The first sob was so bitter that Harry knew he had struck something. Then she pulled herself together and dried both eyes

‘This was a political appointment. He wasn’t remotely qualified for the job. They sent him here in great haste, as though they couldn’t get him out of Norway fast enough. There had already been signals I would be the candidate for the post but I had to give the keys to the ambassador’s office to someone who didn’t know the difference between a chargé and an attaché. And we never had any kind of relationship. That would have been an absolutely absurd notion to me. Can’t you see that?’

‘What happened then?’

‘When I was sent for, to identify him, I suddenly forgot about all the appointment business – I was getting a new chance. Instead I remembered what a nice, clever man he had been. He was!’

She said it as if Harry had protested.

‘Even though he wasn’t much good as an ambassador, in my opinion. There are some things which are more important than a job and a career. Perhaps I shouldn’t even apply for the post. We’ll have to see. There’s so much to think about. Yes, no, I won’t say anything definite now.’

She sniffed a couple of times and seemed to have recovered. ‘It’s very unusual for a chargé d’affaires to be appointed as an ambassador at the same embassy, you know. To my knowledge, it’s never happened.’

She pulled out a mirror and checked her make-up, and said, apparently to herself: ‘But there’s a first time for everything, I suppose.’

Once Harry was in the taxi on his way back to the police station he decided to leave Tonje Wiig off his list of suspects. Partly because she had been convincing, partly because she could prove she had been somewhere else on the dates the ambassador had spent at the Maradiz Hotel. Tonje had also confirmed there were not a great many Norwegian women resident in Bangkok to choose from.

Therefore it came as a blow to the solar plexus to suddenly have to think the unthinkable. Because it simply wasn’t so unthinkable.

The girl who came through the glass door at the Hard Rock Cafe was a different girl from the one he had seen in the garden and at the funeral, the one with the turned-off, introverted body language and the bad-tempered, defiant expression. Runa’s face opened into a beam when she spotted him sitting with an empty bottle of Coke and a newspaper in front of him. She was wearing a short-sleeved, blue flowery dress. Like a practised illusionist her prosthesis was hardly noticeable.