The machines were buzzing, and the dry heat had put roses in her almost transparent, pale cheeks.
‘Hi,’ Harry said, letting the iron door close behind him.
The small, agile woman got up and they hugged, both feeling a bit awkward.
‘You’re thin,’ she said.
Harry shrugged. ‘How’s . . . everything going?’
‘Greger sleeps when he has to, eats what he has to and hardly ever cries.’ She smiled. ‘And for me that’s everything now.’
He thought he should say something about Halvorsen. Something to show that he hadn’t forgotten. But the right words wouldn’t come. And instead, seeming to understand, she asked how he was.
‘Fine,’ he said, dropping onto a chair. ‘Not bad. Absolutely dreadful. Depends on when you ask.’
‘And today?’ She turned to the TV monitor, pressed a button and people on the screen started running backwards into Storo Mall.
‘I’m paranoid,’ Harry said. ‘I have the feeling I’m hunting someone who is manipulating me, that everything is chaotic and he is making me do exactly what he wants. Do you know the feeling?’
‘Yes,’ Beate said. ‘I call him Greger.’ She stopped rewinding. ‘Do you want to see what I’ve found?’
Harry pushed his chair closer. It was no myth that Beate Lønn had special gifts, that her fusiform gyrus, the part of the brain that stores and identifies human faces, was so highly developed and sensitive that she was a walking index file of criminals.
‘I went through the shots you have of those involved in the case,’ she said. ‘Husbands, children, witnesses and so on. I know what our old friends look like, of course.’
She moved the images frame by frame. ‘There,’ she said, stopping.
The image was frozen and jumped on the screen, showing a selection of people in grainy black and white, out of focus.
‘Where?’ Harry said, feeling as witless as he usually did when he was studying pictures with Beate Lønn.
‘There. It’s the same person in this picture.’ She took out one of the photos from her file.
‘Could this be the person who is tailing you, Harry?’
Harry stared at the photo in astonishment. Then he nodded slowly and grabbed his phone. Katrine Bratt answered after two seconds.
‘Get your coat and meet me down in the garage,’ Harry said. ‘We’re going for a drive.’
Harry drove along Uranienborgveien and Majorstuveien to avoid the traffic lights in Bogstadveien.
‘Was she really sure it was him?’ Katrine said. ‘The picture quality on surveillance cameras –’
‘Believe me,’ Harry said. ‘If Beate Lønn says it’s him, it’s him. Call directory enquiries and get his home number.’
‘I saved it on my mobile,’ Katrine said, bringing it up.
‘Saved?’ Harry glanced at her. ‘Do you do that with everyone you encounter?’
‘Yep. Put them in a group. And then I delete the group when the case is over. You should try it. It’s a wonderful feeling when you press delete. Really . . . tangible.’
Harry stopped across from the yellow house in Hoff.
All the windows were dark.
‘Filip Becker,’ Katrine said. ‘Fancy that.’
‘Remember we’re just having a chat with him. He might have had quite understandable reasons for ringing Vetlesen.’
‘From a payphone in Storo Mall?’
Harry eyed Katrine. The pulse in the thin skin on her neck was visibly throbbing. He looked away and at the living-room window of the house.
‘Come on,’ he said. The moment he seized the car-door handle his mobile rang. ‘Yes?’
The voice at the other end sounded excited, but still reported in short, concise sentences. Harry interrupted the stream with two
Mm
s, a surprised
What?
and a
When?
.
Then, at last, the other end went quiet.
‘Call the Incident Room,’ Harry said. ‘Ask them to send the two nearest patrol cars to Hoffsveien. No sirens and tell them to stop at each end of the residential block . . . What? . . . Because there’s a boy inside and we don’t want to make Becker any more nervous than we have to. OK?’
Evidently it was OK.
‘That was Holm.’ Harry leaned in front of Katrine, opened the glove compartment, rummaged and took out a pair of handcuffs. His people have found quite a few fingerprints on the car in the Lossiuses’ garage. They checked them against the other prints we have in the case.’
Harry took the bunch of keys from the ignition, bent forward and produced a metal box from under the seat. Inserted a key in the lock, opened the box and lifted out a black, short-barrelled Smith & Wesson. ‘One off the windscreen matched.’
Katrine shaped her mouth into a mute ‘O’ and enquired with a nod of her head if it was the yellow house.
‘Yup,’ Harry responded. ‘Professor Filip Becker.’
He saw Katrine Bratt’s eyes widen. But her voice was as calm as before. ‘I have a feeling I’ll soon be pressing delete.’
‘Maybe,’ Harry said, flipping open the cylinder of the revolver and checking there were bullets in all the chambers.
‘There can’t be two men who kidnap women in this way.’ She tilted her head from side to side as if warming up for a boxing contest.
‘A reasonable assumption.’
‘We should’ve known the first time we came here.’
Harry observed her, wondering why he didn’t share her excitement and what had happened to the intoxicating pleasure of making an arrest. Was it because he knew it would soon be replaced by the empty sensation of having arrived too late, of being a fireman sifting the ruins? Yes, but it wasn’t that. It was something else, he could sense it now. He had a nagging doubt. The fingerprints and the recordings from Storo Mall would go a long way in a court case, but it had been too easy. This killer wasn’t like that; he didn’t make such banal errors. This was not the same person who had placed Sylvia Ottersen’s head on top of a snowman, who had frozen a policeman in his own freezer, who had sent Harry a letter saying,
What you should ask yourself is this:
‘
Who made the snowman?
’
‘What shall we do?’ Katrine asked. ‘Shall we arrest him ourselves?’
Harry couldn’t hear from the intonation whether this was a question or not.
‘For the time being we wait,’ Harry said. ‘Until backup is in position. Then we’ll ring the bell.’
‘And if he isn’t at home?’
‘He’s at home.’
‘Oh? How do—?’
‘Look at the living-room window. Keep your eyes focused.’
She watched. And when the white light changed behind the large panoramic window he could see she understood. The light came from a TV.
They waited in silence. There were no sounds. A crow screeched. Then it was quiet again. Harry’s phone rang.
Their backup was in position.
Harry briefed them quickly. He didn’t want to see any uniforms until they were summoned, except perhaps if they heard shots or shouting.
‘Put it on silent,’ Katrine said after he had rung off.
He smiled briefly, did as she said and stole a glance at her. Thought about her face when the freezer door fell open. But now her face revealed no fear or tension, just concentration. He put the phone in his jacket pocket and heard it clunk against his revolver.
They got out of the car, crossed the road and opened the gate. The wet shingle sucked greedily at their shoes. Harry kept his eyes on the large window, watching for shadows and any movement towards the white wall.
Then they were standing on the doorstep. Katrine glanced at Harry, who nodded. She rang the bell. A deep, hesitant ding-dong sounded from inside.
They waited. No footsteps. No shadows against the wavy glass of the oblong window beside the front door.
Harry moved forward and placed his ear against the glass, a simple and surprisingly effective way of monitoring a house. But he could hear nothing, not even the TV. He took three paces back, grabbed the eaves that protruded over the front steps, held on to the guttering with both hands and pulled himself up until he was high enough to see the whole of the living room through the window. On the floor sat a figure, legs crossed, with its back to him, wearing a grey coat. A pair of enormous headphones encircled the cranium like a black halo. A cable stretched from the headphones to the TV.
‘He can’t hear us because he’s got headphones on,’ Harry said, dropping down in time to see Katrine grip the door handle. The rubber seal around the frame released the door with a sucking noise.
‘Seems we’re welcome,’ Katrine said in a soft voice and entered.
Caught unawares and quietly cursing, Harry strode in after her. Katrine was already by the living-room door, and opened it. She stood there until Harry came alongside. She stepped back, banged into a pedestal where a vase teetered perilously until it decided to stay upright.
There were at least six metres between them and the person still sitting with his back to them.
On the screen a baby was trying to walk while holding the index fingers of a smiling woman. The blue light of the DVD player button shone under the TV. Harry experienced a moment of déjà vu, a sense that a tragedy was going to repeat itself. Exactly like this: silence, home movie of happy times with the family, the contrast between then and now, the tragedy that has already been played out and just needs a conclusion.
Katrine pointed, but he had already seen it.
The gun was lying behind the figure, between a half-finished puzzle and a Game Boy, and looked like a toy. A Glock 21, Harry guessed, feeling queasy as his body geared up and more adrenalin entered his bloodstream.
They had a choice. Stay by the door, shout Becker’s name and risk the consequences of confronting an armed man. Or disarm him before he saw them. Harry placed a hand on Katrine’s shoulder and pushed her behind him while visualising how long it would take for Becker to turn, pick up the gun, aim and fire. Four long strides would be enough, and there was no light behind Harry that would cast a shadow and too much light on the screen for him to be reflected there.
Harry took a deep breath and set off. Placed his foot as gently as possible on the parquet floor. The back did not react. He was in the middle of his second stride when he heard the crash behind him. And knew instinctively it was the vase. He saw the figure spin round, saw Filip Becker’s agonised expression. Harry froze and the two of them stared at each other. The TV screen behind Becker went black. Becker’s mouth opened as if to say something. The whites of his eyes contained rivers of red, and his cheeks were puffy, as though he had been crying.
‘The gun!’
It was Katrine shouting and Harry automatically lifted his eyes and saw her reflection in the dark screen. She was standing by the door, legs apart with her arm stretched out in front, her hands squeezed around a revolver.
Time seemed to slow, to become a thick, shapeless material in which only his senses continued to function in real time.
A trained policeman like Harry should have instinctively thrown himself to the ground and drawn his gun. But there was something else, something that was tardier than his instincts, but worked with greater power. Harry would later change his opinion, but at first he thought he acted as he did because of another déjà vu experience, the sight of a dead man on a floor struck by a police bullet because he knew he had reached the end of the road, that he didn’t have the energy to grapple with any more ghosts.
Harry stepped to the right, into Katrine’s line of fire.
He heard a smooth, oiled click behind him. The sound of the revolver hammer being uncocked, of the finger easing the pressure on the trigger.
Becker’s hand was pressed against the floor near the pistol. His fingers and the flesh between them were white. Which meant that Becker was supporting his body weight on them. The other hand – his right – was holding the remote control. If Becker went for his gun with his right hand as he was sitting now, he would lose balance.
‘Don’t move,’ Harry said loudly.
Becker’s only move was to blink twice, as though wishing to erase the sight of Harry and Katrine. Harry moved forward calmly but efficiently. Bent down to pick up the gun, which was surprisingly light. So light that it would have been impossible for there to have been bullets in the magazine, he reflected.
Harry stowed the gun in his jacket pocket, beside his own revolver, and crouched down. On the screen he could see Katrine’s gun pointed at them, as she nervously shifted her weight from foot to foot. He stretched out a hand to Becker, who retreated like a timid animal, and removed the man’s headphones.
‘Where’s Jonas?’ Harry asked.
Becker scrutinised Harry as if he understood neither the situation nor the language.
‘Jonas?’ Harry repeated. Then he shouted. ‘Jonas! Jonas, are you here?’
‘Shh,’ Becker said. ‘He’s asleep.’ His voice was somnambulant, as if he had taken tranquillisers.
Becker pointed to the headphones. ‘He mustn’t wake up.’
Harry swallowed. ‘Where is he?’
‘Where?’ Becker angled his head and looked at Harry, seeming only then to recognise him. ‘In bed of course. All boys have to sleep in their own beds.’ His voice rose and fell as if he were quoting from a song.
Harry plunged his hand down into his other jacket pocket and took out the handcuffs. ‘Put out your hands,’ he said.
Becker blinked again.
‘It’s for your own safety,’ Harry said.
It was a well-used line, one they drilled into you back at Police College, and was primarily intended to relax arrestees. However, when Harry heard himself say it, he knew at once why he had stepped into the firing line. And it was not because of ghosts.
Becker raised his hands to Harry as though in supplication, and the steel snapped shut round his narrow, hairy wrists.
‘Stay where you are,’ Harry said. ‘She’ll take care of you.’
Harry straightened up and went towards the doorway where Katrine stood. She had lowered her gun, and she smiled at him with a curious gleam in her eyes. The coals deep inside seemed to be smouldering.