Harry Hole Mysteries 3-Book Bundle (51 page)

He punched in another number.

‘Yes,’ Hagen answered. The voice was toneless, lifeless. The resignation-writing voice, Harry presumed.

‘Drop the paperwork,’ Harry said. ‘You’ve got to ring the Chief Constable. I need a firearms authorisation. Arrest of suspected murderer in Åsengata 12, Torshov.’

‘Harry –’

‘Listen. The remains of Sylvia Ottersen are in a tank at the Anatomy Department. Katrine is not the Snowman. Do you understand?’

Silence.

‘No,’ Hagen confessed.

‘The Snowman is a lecturer at the department. Mathias Lund-Helgesen.’

‘Lund-Helgesen? Well, I’ll be damned. Do you mean the—?’

‘Yes, the doctor who was so helpful in focussing our attention on Idar Vetlesen.’

Life had returned to Hagen’s voice. ‘The Chief is going to ask if it’s likely that the man’s armed.’

‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘as far as we know, he hasn’t used a firearm on any of the people he’s killed.’

A couple of seconds passed before Hagen caught the sarcasm. ‘I’ll phone him now,’ he said.

Harry rang off and turned the key in the ignition while calling Magnus Skarre with his other hand. Skarre and the engine responded in unison.

‘Still in Tryvann?’ Harry shouted above the roar.

‘Yes.’

‘Drop everything and get yourself in a car. Meet me at the Åsengata/ Vogts gate crossroads. It’s a bust.’

‘All hell broken loose, has it?’

‘Yeah,’ Harry said. The rubber screamed on the concrete as he let the clutch go.

He thought of Jonas. For some reason he thought of Jonas.

One of the six patrol cars Harry had asked the Incident Room for was already at the crossing by Åsengata as Harry came down Vogts gate from Storo. Harry drove up onto the pavement, jumped out and went over to them. They rolled down the window and passed Harry the walkie-talkie he had requested.

‘Switch off the blender,’ Harry ordered, pointing to the rotating blue light. He pressed the talk button and told the patrol cars to turn off the sirens well before they got to the scene.

Four minutes later six patrol cars were assembled at the crossing. The police officers, among them Skarre and Ola Li from Crime Squad, had thronged around Harry’s car where he sat with a street map in his lap, pointing.

‘Li, you take three cars to cut off any possible escape routes. Here, here and here.’

Li leaned over the map nodding.

Harry turned to Skarre. ‘The caretaker?’

Skarre raised the phone. ‘Talking to him now. He’s on his way over to the main door with keys.’

‘OK. You take six men and position yourselves by the entrance, back stairs and, if possible, on the roof. And you bring up the rear, OK? Has the Delta car arrived?’

‘Here.’ Two of the officers, identical to the others from the outside, signalled that they were driving the regular vehicle for Delta, the Special Forces Unit trained particularly for this kind of operation.

‘OK, I want you in front of the main entrance now. Are you all armed?’

The officers nodded. Some of them were armed with MP5 machine guns they had unlocked from car boots. The others had only service revolvers. It was a fiscal matter, as the Chief Constable had once explained.

‘The caretaker says Lund-Helgesen lives on the second floor,’ Skarre said, slipping the mobile phone into his jacket pocket. ‘There’s just one flat on each floor. No exits to the roof. To reach the rear staircase he’d have to go up to the third and through a locked attic.’

‘Good,’ Harry said. ‘Send two men up the rear stairs and tell them to wait in the attic.’

‘OK.’

Harry took with him the two uniformed officers from the car that had arrived first. An older officer and a young, pimply whippersnapper
who had both worked with Skarre before. Instead of going into Åsengata 12, they crossed the street and went into the block opposite.

Both young boys from the Stigson family living on the second floor stared wide-eyed at the two uniformed men while their father listened to Harry explaining why they had to use their flat for a short while. Harry entered the sitting room, pushed the sofa away from the window and took a closer look at the flat on the other side of the street.

‘Light’s on in the living room,’ he said.

‘Someone sitting there,’ said the older officer who had taken up a position behind him.

‘I’ve heard your eyesight deteriorates by thirty per cent after you hit fifty,’ Harry said.

‘I’m not blind. In the big chair there you can see the top of his head and the hand on the arm rest.’

Harry squinted. Shit, did he need glasses? Well, if the old boy thought he saw someone, then he must have done.

‘You stay here and radio if he moves. All right?’

‘All right,’ the older man smiled.

Harry took the whippersnapper along with him.

‘Who’s sitting inside?’ the young officer said in a loud voice over the clatter of their feet as they raced downstairs.

‘Heard of the Snowman?’

‘Oh, crap.’

‘That’s right.’

They sprinted across the street to the other block. The caretaker, Skarre and five uniformed policemen stood ready by the front door.

‘I haven’t got a key for the flats,’ the caretaker said. ‘Only for this door.’

‘That’s fine,’ Harry said. Everyone got their weapons ready? We make as little noise as possible, OK? Delta, you stay with me …’

Harry took out Katrine’s Smith & Wesson and signalled to the caretaker, who turned the key in the lock.

Harry and the two Delta men, both armed with MP5s, strode soundlessly up the stairs, three steps at a time.

They stopped on the second floor outside an unmarked blue door. One officer laid his ear against the door, faced Harry and shook his head. Harry had lowered the volume of the walkie-talkie to the very minimum and now he raised it to his mouth.

‘Alpha to …’ Harry had not allocated call names and couldn’t remember first names, ‘… to the window post by the sofa. Has the target moved? Over.’

He let go of the button and there was a low crackle. Then came the voice:

‘He’s still sitting in the chair.’

‘Roger. We’re going in. Over and out.’

One officer nodded and produced a crowbar while the other backed away and braced himself.

Harry had seen the technique used before; one man prises open the door so that the other can charge in. Not because they couldn’t have broken it open, but because it is the effect of the loud bang, the power and speed that paralyses the target and in nine cases out of ten he freezes on the chair, sofa or bed.

But Harry held up a restraining hand. He pressed the door handle and pushed.

Mathias hadn’t lied; it was unlocked.

The door slid open without a sound. Harry pointed to his chest to say he would go first.

The flat was not minimalist in the way that Harry had imagined.

It was minimalist in the sense that there was nothing there: no shoes in the hall, no furniture, no pictures. Only bare walls begging for new wallpaper or a lick of paint. It looked as if it had been abandoned for a substantial amount of time.

The living-room door was ajar and through the gap Harry could see the arm of the chair, a hand on top. A small hand with a watch. He held his breath, took two long strides, gripped the revolver with both hands and nudged the door open with his foot.

He sensed the other two – who had moved into the edge of his vision – stiffen.

And heard a barely audible whisper. ‘Jesus Christ …’

A large illuminated chandelier hung above the armchair and lit up the person sitting there and staring straight at him. The neck bore bruising from strangulation, the face was pale and beautiful, the hair black and the dress sky blue with tiny white flowers. The same dress as in the photo on his kitchen calendar. Harry felt his heart explode in his chest as the rest of his body turned to stone. He tried to move, but could not tear himself away from her glazed eyes. The accusatory glazed eyes. Which accused him of not having acted; he had known nothing of this, but he should have acted, he should have stopped this happening, he should have saved her.

She was as white as his mother had been on her death bed.

‘Check the rest of the flat,’ Harry said in a thick voice, lowering his revolver.

He took an unsteady step towards the body and held her wrist in his hand. It was ice-cold and lifeless, like marble. Yet he could feel a ticking, a weak pulse, and for one absurd moment he thought she had only been made up to look dead. Then he looked down and saw it was the watch which was ticking.

‘There’s no one else here,’ he heard one of the officers behind him say. Then a cough. ‘Do you know who she is?’

‘Yes,’ Harry said, running a finger over the watch face. The same watch a mere few hours ago he had been holding in his own hand. The watch that had been left in his bedroom. That he had put in the bird box because Rakel’s boyfriend was taking her out this evening. To a party. To celebrate that from now on the two of them would be as one.

Again Harry looked at the eyes, her accusing eyes.

Yes, he thought. Guilty on all counts.

Skarre had come into the flat and was standing behind Harry, staring over his shoulder at the dead woman in the chair. Beside him stood the two Delta officers.

‘Strangled?’ he asked.

Harry neither answered nor moved. One shoulder strap of the sky-blue dress had slipped down.

‘Unusual to wear a summer dress in December,’ Skarre said, mostly for the sake of conversation.

‘She usually does,’ Harry said in a voice which sounded as if it came from a long way away.

‘Who does?’ Skarre asked.

‘Rakel.’

The policeman gave a start. He had seen Harry’s ex when she used to work for the police. ‘Is … is … that Rakel? But …’

‘It’s her dress,’ Harry said. ‘And her watch. He’s dressed her up as Rakel. But the woman sitting there is Birte Becker.’

Skarre eyed the corpse in silence. It didn’t look like any other corpse he had seen. This one was as white as chalk and bloated.

‘Come with me,’ Harry said, directing his attention to the two Delta officers before turning to Skarre. ‘You stay here and cordon off the flat. Ring the Crime Scene Unit in Tryvann and tell them they’ve got another job waiting for them.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Dance,’ Harry said.

The flat went quiet after the three men had clattered down the stairs at a run. But seconds later Skarre heard a car starting and the scream of tyres on the tarmac of Vogts gate.

The blue light rotated and lit up the road. Harry was sitting in the front passenger seat and listening to the phone ringing at the other end. From the mirror two miniature bikini-clad women danced to the despairing lament of the siren as the police car slalomed between vehicles on Ring 3.

Please, he implored. Please pick up, Rakel.

He looked at the metal dancers beneath the mirror, thinking he was
like them; someone who danced impotently to another’s tune, a comic figure in a farce in which he was always two steps behind events, always racing through doors a little too late and being met by the audience’s laughter.

Harry cracked. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ he yelled and slung the mobile phone at the windscreen. It slid off the dashboard and down to the floor. The officer driving exchanged glances with the other officer in the mirror.

‘Turn off the siren,’ Harry said.

It went quiet.

And Harry’s attention was caught by a sound coming from the floor.

He picked up the phone.

‘Hello!’ he shouted. ‘Hello. Are you at home, Rakel?’

‘Of course I am, you’re ringing the landline.’ It was her voice. A gentle, calm laugh. ‘Is something the matter?’

‘Is Oleg at home, too?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s sitting here in the kitchen eating. We’re waiting for Mathias. What’s up, Harry?’

‘Listen to me carefully now, Rakel. Do you hear me?’

‘You’re frightening me, Harry. What is it?’

‘Put the safety chain on the door.’

‘Why? It’s locked and –’

‘Put the safety chain on, Rakel!’ Harry yelled.

‘OK, OK!’

He heard her say something to Oleg, then a chair scraped and he heard running feet. When the voice was back it was trembling.

‘Now tell me what’s going on, Harry.’

‘I will. First though you have to promise me you won’t let Mathias into the house under any circumstances.’

‘Mathias? Are you drunk, Harry? You have no right –’

‘Mathias is dangerous, Rakel. I’m sitting here in a police car with two other officers on our way up to you now. I’ll explain the rest later. Now I want you to look out of the window. Can you see anything?’

He heard her hesitate. But he said nothing further, just waited. For
he knew with a sudden certainty that she trusted him, that she believed him, that she always had done. They were approaching the tunnel by Nydalen. On the verge of the road the snow lay like greyish-white wool. Then her voice was back.

‘I can’t see anything. But I don’t know what I’m looking for, do I.’

‘So you can’t see a snowman?’ Harry asked quietly.

He could tell from the silence that the whole thing was becoming clear to her.

‘Tell me this isn’t happening, Harry,’ she whispered. ‘Tell me this is just a dream.’

He closed his eyes and considered whether she could be right. On his eyelids he saw Birte Becker in the chair. Of course it was a dream.

‘I put your watch in the bird box,’ he said.

‘But it wasn’t there, it …’ she began, paused and let out a groan. ‘Oh my God!’

F
ROM THE KITCHEN
R
AKEL HAD A VIEW OF ALL THREE SIDES
from which a person might approach the house. At the back there was a short but precipitous scree slope it was difficult to descend, especially now that the snow had settled. She went from window to window. Peered out and tested them to make sure they were firmly shut. When her father had built the house after the war he had put the windows high in the wall, with iron bars covering them. She knew this had something to do with the war and a Russian who had sneaked into their bunker near Leningrad and shot all his sleeping comrades. Everyone apart from him, who had been asleep nearest the door, so exhausted that he hadn’t woken up until the alarm was sounded and discovered that his blanket was strewn with empty cartridges. That was the last night he’d slept properly, he had always said. But she’d always hated the iron bars. Until now.