She drove. She drove fast as if there was something urgent they had to do. Or were trying to escape. She looked in the mirror. The white, towering clouds over the fjord reminded her of a bride. A bride marching purposefully and unstoppably towards them trailing a veil of rain.
The first heavy drops hit them when they were in dense traffic on Ring Road 3 and she realised immediately that the battle was lost.
‘Exit here,’ Stig said, pointing.
She did as he said, and suddenly they found themselves in a residential area.
‘Take a right here,’ Stig said.
The drops were falling more densely. ‘Where are we?’
‘Berg. Do you see that yellow house?’
‘Yes.’
‘I know the people who own it, it’s empty. Stop outside that garage and I’ll open the garage door.’
Five minutes later they were sitting in the car which was now parked between rusting tools, worn-down tyres and garden furniture draped in cobwebs while they watched the rain tip down outside the open garage door.
‘It doesn’t look like it’s going to stop for a while,’ Martha said. ‘And I think the hood is a write-off.’
‘I agree,’ Stig said. ‘How about a cup of coffee?’
‘Where?’
‘In the kitchen. I know where the key is.’
‘But . . .’
‘This is my house.’
She looked at him. She hadn’t driven fast enough. She hadn’t made it in time. Whatever it was, it was too late.
‘OK,’ she said.
22
SIMON ADJUSTED THE
gauze mask and studied the body. It reminded him of something.
‘The council owns and runs this venue,’ Kari said. ‘They hire out rehearsal rooms to young bands for next to nothing. Better to sing about being a gangster than drive around the streets and actually be one.’
Simon remembered what it was. Jack Nicholson frozen to death in
The Shining
. He had watched it on his own. It was after her. And before Else. Perhaps it was the snow. The dead man looked as if he was lying in a snowdrift. A fine layer of heroin covered the body and most of the room. Around the dead man’s mouth, nose and eyes the powder had come into contact with moisture and started to clump.
‘A band that rehearses further down the corridor found him when they were going home,’ Kari said.
The body had been discovered last night, but Simon hadn’t been informed until he came to work earlier that morning that a total of three people had been found killed. And that Kripos was handling the case.
In other words, the Commissioner had asked Kripos for assistance – which was the same as giving them the case – without even consulting his own Homicide Squad first. The outcome might ultimately have been the same, but even so.
‘His name is Kalle Farrisen,’ Kari said.
She was reading aloud from the preliminary report. Simon had called the Commissioner and asked that it be sent to them. And requested immediate access to the crime scene. After all, it was still their turf.
‘Simon,’ the Commissioner had said, ‘take a look at it, by all means, but don’t get involved. You and I are too old for a pissing contest.’
‘
You
might be too old,’ Simon had replied.
‘You heard me, Simon.’
Simon pondered it from time to time. There was no doubt which of them had had the greatest potential. Where had the road forked? When had it been decided who would occupy which chair? Who would be sitting in the high-backed chair in the Commissioner’s office and who would be occupying the battered one in the Homicide Squad with his wings clipped? And that the best of them would end up in a chair in his study with a bullet from his own gun through his head.
‘The guitar strings around his head are bottom E and G and manufactured by Ernie Ball. The jack-to-jack cable is made by Fender,’ Kari read.
‘And the fan and the radiator?’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Go on.’
‘The fan was switched on. The medical examiner’s preliminary conclusion is that Kalle Farrisen suffocated.’
Simon studied the knot on the jack cable. ‘It looks like Kalle was forced to inhale the drug which was blown into his face. Would you agree?’
‘I would,’ Kari said. ‘He managed to hold his breath for a short while, but eventually he had to give in. The guitar strings prevented him from turning his head away. But he tried, that’s why he has injuries from the thinner guitar string. The heroin ends up in his nose, stomach and lungs, it’s absorbed into the bloodstream, he starts feeling drugged and carries on breathing. But more faintly now because the heroin is suppressing his respiration. And finally, he stops breathing altogether.’
‘Classic case of death by overdose,’ Simon said. ‘Same thing happened to several of his customers.’
He pointed to the cable. ‘And whoever tied this knot is left-handed.’
‘We can’t go on meeting like this.’
They turned round. Åsmund Bjørnstad was standing in the doorway with a wry smile and two people behind him who were holding a stretcher.
‘We want to move the body now, so if you’re done . . .’
‘We’ve seen everything we wanted to,’ Simon said, getting up laboriously. ‘Would it be all right if we took a look around?’
‘Of course,’ the Kripos investigator said, still with this half-smile, gallantly showing them the way. Simon rolled his eyes at Kari in surprise, who in return raised her eyebrows as if to say he’s changed his tune.
‘Any witnesses?’ Simon asked in the lift and looked at the broken glass.
‘No,’ Bjørnstad said. ‘But the guitarist from the band who found the body says that there was a guy here earlier in the evening. He claimed to be playing in a band called the Young Hopeless, but we’ve checked and that band no longer exists.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘The witness says the guy wore a hoodie that covered his head. Lots of young people do these days.’
‘So he was young?’
‘The witness thought so. Somewhere between twenty and twenty-five.’
‘What colour was his hoodie?’
Bjørnstad flipped open his notebook. ‘Grey, I believe.’
The lift doors opened, they stepped out carefully and straddled cordons and flags set out by the CSOs. There were four people on this floor. Two living and two dead. Simon nodded briefly to one of the living. He had a bushy ginger beard and was crouching on all fours over a body, holding a torch the size of a fountain pen in his hand. The deceased had a large wound under one eye. A dark red halo of blood on the floor surrounded his head. At the top of the halo the blood spatter formed a pattern that resembled a teardrop. Simon had once tried to explain to Else how a crime scene could be beautiful. He had tried once and never again.
Another and much bigger victim lay on the threshold with his upper body inside the door.
Simon’s gaze automatically scanned the walls and found the bullet hole in the wall. He noticed the hatch in the door and the mirror up under the ceiling. Then he took a step backwards into the lift, raised his right arm and took aim. Changed his mind and raised his left arm instead. He had to take one step to the right to make the angle fit with the trajectory of a bullet through the head and – if the skull hadn’t caused the bullet to change direction – into the bullet hole in the plaster. He closed his eyes. He had stood in the same position recently. On the steps outside the Iversen home. Aimed with his right hand. There he had also had to adjust his position to make the angle fit. Move one foot to just outside the flagstones. Onto the soft soil. The same soft soil which was around the bushes. But there hadn’t been a matching shoeprint on the soil next to the flagstones.
‘Shall we carry on the guided tour inside, ladies and gentlemen?’ Bjørnstad held the door open and waited until Kari and Simon had stepped over the body and entered. ‘The council rented out this room to what they thought was a band booking and management agency.’
Simon peered inside the empty safe. ‘What do you think happened?’
‘Gang-related incident,’ Bjørnstad said. ‘They hit the factory around closing time. The first victim was shot while he lay on the floor – we’ve recovered the bullet from the floorboards. The second victim was shot as he lay across the threshold – there’s a bullet in the floor there as well. They got the third man to open the safe. They took the money and the drugs, and then killed him downstairs to send a message to the competition about who’s in charge now.’
‘I see,’ Simon said. ‘And the shells?’
Bjørnstad laughed quickly. ‘I know. Sherlock Holmes smells a connection with the Iversen murder.’
‘No empty shells?’
Åsmund Bjørnstad looked from Simon to Kari and back to Simon. Then – with a magician’s hey presto smile – he produced a plastic bag from his jacket pocket. He dangled it in front of Simon’s face. It contained two empty shells.
‘Sorry to bust your theory, old boy,’ he said. ‘Besides, the big bullet holes in the victims indicate a far bigger calibre than the one we found in Agnete Iversen. That concludes your guided tour. I hope you enjoyed it.’
‘I just have three questions before we leave.’
‘Go on then, Chief Inspector Kefas.’
‘Where did you find the empty shells?’
‘Next to the bodies.’
‘Where were the victims’ weapons?’
‘They didn’t have any. Final question?’
‘Did the Commissioner tell you to be cooperative and give us the guided tour?’
Åsmund Bjørnstad laughed. ‘Possibly through my boss in Kripos. We always do what our bosses tell us, don’t we?’
‘Yes,’ Simon said. ‘If we want to get ahead, then that’s what we do. Thanks for the tour.’
Bjørnstad stayed behind in the room, but Kari followed Simon. She stopped behind him when Simon, rather than going straight into the lift, asked the bearded CSO to lend him his torch and went over to the bullet hole in the wall. Pointed the torch at it.
‘Have you already removed the bullet, Nils?’
‘That must be an old hole; we didn’t find any bullets there,’ Nils said while he examined the floor around the body with a simple magnifying glass.
Simon squatted down, moistened the tips of his fingers and pressed them against the floor right under the hole. He held up his fingers to Kari. She could see that tiny plaster particles had stuck to his skin.
‘Thanks for the use of your torch,’ Simon said and Nils looked up, nodded briefly and took the torch.
‘What was that about?’ Kari asked when the lift doors had closed in front of them.
‘I need a moment to think, then I’ll tell you,’ Simon said.
Kari was annoyed. Not because she suspected her boss of being coy, but because she couldn’t follow him. Not being able to keep up wasn’t something she was used to. The doors opened and she stepped out. She turned round and looked quizzically at Simon, who was still inside the lift.
‘May I borrow your marble, please?’ he asked.
She sighed and stuck her hand into her pocket. Simon placed the small, yellow marble in the middle of the lift floor. It rolled at first slowly, then with increasing speed to the front of the lift where it disappeared down the gap between the inner and the outer doors.
‘Oops,’ Simon said. ‘Let’s go down to the basement and look for it.’
‘It’s not irreplaceable,’ Kari said. ‘I’ve got more at home.’
‘I’m not talking about the marble.’
Kari hastened after him again, still two steps behind. At least. A thought occurred to her. The thought of another job she could have gone for and could be doing right now. Better pay, more independence. No eccentric bosses and foul-smelling bodies. But that time would come; for now it was a question of arming herself with patience.
They found the stairwell, the basement corridor and the lift door. In contrast to the floors above this was a simple metal door with a mottled glass pane. Across the door was a sign. LIFT CONTROL. KEEP OUT. Simon shook the door handle. Locked.
‘Run back upstairs to the rehearsal rooms and see if you can find a cable,’ Simon said.
‘What kind of—’
‘Anything,’ he said and leaned against the wall.
She swallowed a protest and headed back to the stairs.
Two minutes later she was back with a jack-jack cable and watched while Simon unscrewed the plugs and stripped off the plastic around the wires. Then he bent the cable into a U-shape and slipped it in between the lift door and the frame at the height of the door handle. They heard a loud click, and a couple of sparks flew. He opened the door.
‘Christ,’ Kari said. ‘Where did you learn that?’
‘I was trouble when I was little,’ Simon said, levering himself down to the bottom of the lift shaft which was half a metre lower than the basement floor. He looked up the lift shaft. ‘If I hadn’t become a police officer . . .’
‘Isn’t this a bit risky? Kari said, feeling a prickling on her scalp. ‘What if the lift comes down?’
But Simon was already kneeling on all fours and sweeping the concrete floor with his hands.
‘Do you need a little light down there?’ she asked, hoping that he couldn’t hear the tension in her voice.
‘Always,’ he laughed.
A tiny scream escaped Kari when she heard a small bang and saw the thick, oiled wires starting to move. But Simon quickly got to his feet, pressed his palms against the basement floor and pulled himself up into the corridor. ‘Come,’ he said.
She half ran after him up the stairs, through the exit door and across the gravelled area.
‘Wait!’ she said before he got into the car which they had parked between the two derelict trucks. Simon stopped and looked at her across the roof of the car.
‘I know,’ he said.
‘What do you know?’
‘That it’s bloody irritating when your partner goes solo and doesn’t tell you what’s going on.’
‘Exactly! So when will you—’
‘But I’m not your partner, Kari Adel,’ Simon said. ‘I’m your boss and your mentor. It’ll happen when it happens. Do you understand?’
She looked at him. Saw the breeze toss his comically thin hair to and fro across the shiny scalp. Saw the flint in his otherwise friendly gaze.
‘Understood,’ she said.
‘Take these.’ He opened one hand and threw something across the roof of the car. She cupped hands and caught both items. She looked at them. One was the yellow marble. The other was an empty shell.