Closed for Winter (24 page)

Line stood at the window with her arms crossed. After two days of warm autumn sunshine, the fog had returned. The weather was bleaker and more cheerless than ever.

Tommy had not phoned, nor had he answered when she had tried to phone him. She needed to talk to him. He was not the man she wanted to share the rest of her life with, and she had to let him know that. Turning around, she crossed to the kitchen, where she rinsed a couple of plates before returning to the window. The fog was denser now and she could barely discern the sea.

Her mobile phone lay on the coffee table. She flopped down on the settee and tried again, but there was no response. The blank screen on her computer was glowing. In the past two days she had crossed out more of her novel than she had written.

‘Fuck!’ she shouted into the room.

It felt good to release some of her frustration. She called out again, slamming down the lid of the laptop before putting on her outdoor clothes.

As she inserted the key to lock the door, she was struck by a rational thought and went back inside. Packing the laptop computer and camera in a bag, she checked the room for anything else that might tempt an intruder, and carried the bag with her to the car.

An empty bottle Tommy must have left in the passenger foot-well rolled backwards and forwards as she manoeuvred along the bumpy gravel track. It lay beside empty doughnut bags and old parking receipts trampled into the rubber mat. Everything about him irritated her now.

The fog lifted as she headed inland, but a cold, misty drizzle made visibility poor and the windscreen wipers did nothing more than spread water across the screen, making the drive to Oslo an exhausting experience. By the time she arrived at her flat, a thumping headache was developing behind her right eye.

She slammed the car door behind her and peered at the façade of the building. The ceiling light in the kitchen was switched on but, if she knew Tommy, he would be in bed fast asleep.

Tommy’s head appeared around the kitchen door when she let herself in. ‘Line?’

She dropped her bag as she approached him. ‘Why don’t you answer the phone when I call?’

He glanced backwards, and she realised he was not alone. A longhaired man, leaning over the kitchen table, peered at her. Papers and photographs were spread out in front of him. Tommy stood in the doorway, blocking Line from entering. ‘I’m a bit busy at the moment.’

The man swept the papers into a shoulder bag.

‘What’s going on?’ she demanded.

The man with the shoulder bag slipped past Tommy. ‘I have to go now,’ he said, pushing past Line.

‘Who was that?’ she asked, watching the door as it closed behind him.

‘I can’t …,’ Tommy began, breaking off abruptly. ‘It’s to do with
Shazam Station
.’

She entered the kitchen, positioning herself with her back to the worktop. ‘What was all that about?’ she asked, nodding towards the empty table.

‘There’s such a lot going on just now,’ Tommy said. ‘That’s why I haven’t phoned you. I can’t explain all of it.’

‘You can try.’

‘Not now. There are a number of things I need to sort out.’ He lifted the jacket hanging over the back of the chair. ‘Are you staying? Have you finished at the cottage, I mean?’

She shook her head dejectedly. ‘Do you know what? This here …’

‘I just need a few days,’ Tommy interrupted. ‘Everything will be okay. Can’t you be patient with me?’

‘My patience has run out,’ she declared emphatically, stepping towards the door. ‘I’m leaving, and when I come back, you’d better be gone. Gone and away!’

‘But …’

She held the palm of her hand up before whirling around, impetuously grabbing her jacket and rushing out. Her eyes were filling with tears, and she did not want him to see her cry.

Her hands trembled as she inserted the key in the ignition. She paused before turning it, allowing her emotions free rein, sobbing and gasping for breath, without really understanding why she was reacting like this. It felt like a terrible betrayal that he had dragged the part of his life she could not bear into her home.

She pressed her hand to her chest. Her breathing was noisy and rasping. It took time to regain control, but eventually she calmed down. She took out some napkins from the glove compartment to wipe her nose and dry her eyes and struggled to gather her thoughts.

She could pay a visit to the newspaper office to pass the time, but when she glanced at herself in the car mirror she realised her appearance would provoke too many questions.

Through the rain-spattered windscreen, she saw Tommy emerge from the building. Speaking on his mobile phone he did not look in her direction. Instead, he hurried across the street and into the little blue Peugeot he had borrowed to visit her at the cottage.

As the vehicle swung from the kerb, she turned on the ignition of her own car and, waiting until he was almost out of sight, depressed the accelerator and followed. She stayed three vehicles behind as they entered Ullevålsveien, without entirely knowing what she was doing.

Crisscrossing the city centre, Tommy found his way to Grønland, with Line following through the one-way streets, all the time careful to remain far enough behind to remain unseen. At the end of Tøyengata, the distance between them was so great that when he turned into the enormous car park in front of the Botanic Gardens, she was able to veer across to the Munch Museum, parking behind a container building where modern art was stored.

The distance between her and Tommy was almost two hundred metres. She observed that he had parked behind another car and stepped out, but not whether anyone was occupying the other vehicle.

Lifting her camera, she zoomed in. The door of the other car opened and a dark-skinned man emerged. Line pressed the shutter button by sheer force of habit.

The man skirted around the car and shook Tommy by the hand before opening the lid of his suitcase. He removed a bag and let it rest on the edge of the boot. The zip was open and Tommy leaned forward to check the contents before nodding. The man shut the bag again, and handed it to Tommy. It seemed heavy. Tommy placed it on the rear seat of his own car before resuming his place behind the steering wheel.

Line slid down in her seat. The containers partly concealed her car, but it was possible that he might spot her. After his car passed she waited for a moment or two before looking up, hurriedly turning to follow him.

After several hundred metres she caught sight of him again, three vehicles ahead, driving back the way he had come. At the roundabout at
Galleri Oslo
he continued across the marshalling yard at Oslo Central Station and drove out along the E18 highway travelling east towards Bispelokket. Two cars now separated them and she was afraid she would lose him in the heavy traffic.

Suddenly he turned into the harbour area. She let a couple of lorries and a cement vehicle go in front of her to avoid him seeing her, and eventually followed along the water’s edge to Sørenga, the area that would soon become a new urban district. At Sjursøya he swung his car onto the quayside and drove into a colossal warehouse, right down by the sea, where cranes soared to the leaden skies.

Line halted behind a stack of steel pipes piled on a kind of frame so that she had a satisfactory view of the surrounding area.

Several East European construction workers were working with scrap iron directly in front of her, but appeared to have no interest in what she was doing. For several minutes she stared at the entrance to the warehouse Tommy had driven into. Container trucks and terminal tractors were driving here and there, but nothing else was going on.

She felt nauseous. The palms of her hands were sweaty and she felt slightly dizzy. She wanted to scream out loud, to hit out, to find some outlet for her despair.

Her camera lay on the seat beside her. She cradled it on her lap and glanced through the photos she had taken beside the Munch Museum. Using the zoom function she noticed that the legs of the unknown man partly screened the car registration number. She could try searching for a variety of combinations later.

When she zoomed a couple of notches closer to the bag sandwiched between the two men, she froze. She could not be certain, but thought she saw the barrel of a gun protruding from it.

Wisting hung his blazer over the gun cabinet door and removed his shoulder holster. Placing one strap over his shoulder, he fastened it so that it lay under his left breast, before taking out his service revolver, a Heckler & Koch P30. The metal felt cold in his hand.

Pulling the magazine from the stock, he placed both parts of the gun on the bench and opened a box of ammunition. He picked out nine brass cartridges, weighing them in his hand before pushing them into the magazine, the resistance in the spring increasing as he filled it. He then let the magazine slide into the stock again. A metallic click told him it was in place. Metal slid easily over well-oiled metal when he loaded a cartridge into the chamber before securing the firearm, shoving it into the shoulder holster and donning his blazer.

It had been a long time since he had worn the gun. He turned his lapel aside and abruptly pulled it out, his finger settling automatically along the trigger guard as he fixed on an imaginary target at the opposite end of the room. It was reassuring to feel the firmness of the revolver in his hand. He was still proficient.

Prior to his return, someone had left a closed cardboard box in the middle of his desk. Underneath, bundles of unread reports and notes were still stacked. He picked it up. There were no markings of any kind on the outside, and it weighed next to nothing. Something inside slid from one end to the other.

Putting it down, he opened the lid, grimacing at the contents. A dead bird with an angry yellow beak and lacklustre eyes, its black wings spread out from its body. He stepped back with the lid in his hand, and looked around as though looking for someone to explain why a dead bird had been left on his desk. He carried the box into the corridor and listened to voices from the conference room.

Espen Mortensen and Nils Hammer stood beside the coffee machine. ‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked, holding out the box.

‘A dead bird?’ Hammer suggested, grinning.

‘What’s it doing in my office?’

‘I was the one who put it there,’ Mortensen said. ‘I came in with the report. You weren’t there, so I left it while I got myself a cup of coffee.’

‘What report?’

‘From the Veterinary College. It just arrived by fax. Haven’t you read it?’

Wisting shook his head.

‘They’ve carried out post mortems on several of the dead birds,’ Mortensen said. ‘They died of cardiac arrest following multiple organ failure.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘They were poisoned.’

Wisting glanced down at the bird in the box.

‘Poisoned?’

‘Cocaine.’

The logical connection dawned on him, like a child finally understanding a simple sum.

‘Fatal overdose,’ Hammer commented.

Espen Mortensen agreed: ‘The physical effects are approximately the same. High pulse rate, high blood pressure, cardiac arrhythmia, heart attack and cerebral hemorrhage.’

Wisting rested the cardboard box on the young crime scene technician’s chest.

‘Give this to Christine Thiis,’ he said. ‘Ask her to issue a press release about it, and after that you can bury the evidence in the garden.’

Line looked up from the camera. For seconds she had forgotten to breathe, and now her breath came in short, sharp gulps as she glanced at the other photos. The first was the only one with any of the bag’s contents visible.

A piercingly loud noise, followed by a furious outburst in a foreign language, made her start in her seat. Twenty metres away, three men in raincoats stood around a metal drum that had fallen from the back of a truck. Another man emerged from a workman’s hut, waving his arms and shouting at them. Her heart pounded in her chest.

She started the car, driving until she found a spot where the containers formed a passageway and she could park under cover of an untidy stack of concrete panels. From here she could see the warehouse and parts of its interior. It appeared that the building contained huge steel structures, and there were vehicles inside, although she could not make out any activity. Through her camera lens she could see people moving about, although still indistinct shadows.

Lowering the camera, she looked for a better vantage point. There were sheds at the water’s edge, but they would not give a better view. The skies above the sea darkened and the rain became heavier, hammering on the car roof. A deluge cascaded down the windscreen.

Putting aside the camera, she picked up her phone and, flipping to Tommy’s number, sat with her thumb poised on the green button. The simplest thing would be to call him, launch into an innocent conversation but try to get something out of him about what he was up to. She was about to press the button when car headlights were switched on in the warehouse interior, followed by another vehicle starting up. Two large, dark cars with shaded windows rolled from the open storage hall, passing less than forty metres away. Muddy water splashed up from potholes in the gravel surface.

She waited until they were out of sight and reached for the ignition key. As she was about to start, the doors on both sides were snatched open. A man threw himself across the passenger seat and grabbed the bunch of keys, the longhaired man at her kitchen table. The other man placed his hand over her mouth and dragged her from the car.

The shoulder holster and revolver chafed uncomfortably against his ribs. Adjusting the strap, Wisting studied the video footage from inside the cash centre.

The fire officer’s office on the top floor was fitted out as a control centre. From the window they had a direct view of the cash depot. Torrents of rain pelted the asphalt and turned into little streams that ran down the road to the rear of the terracotta-coloured building. The wide river below usually flowed slowly and quietly, but today churned wildly. The water almost reached the top of the poles on the old jetty.

Leif Malm arrived with the Emergency Squad, moving in and out of the side room, talking continuously on his mobile phone.

The Emergency Squad leader, installed in the same office as Wisting, was called Kurt Owesen. Tall and strong, with hair cropped short, his complexion was marred by open pores and scars. ‘Excellent images,’ he said. ‘Razor sharp.’

It was true – the images were top quality. Wisting was pleased to be participating in the coming action via screens instead of from inside the heavily guarded room where the armed officers were gathered downstairs. The fire engines were lined up outside, and armoured police vehicles were concealed behind the doors, ready to go.

From the window, Wisting watched a flock of ducks flying low from the east. One of them broke away and landed on the murky waters of the river, where it was carried along by the current, momentarily caught before managing to struggle free.

He positioned the blinds so he could see through the slats, but was still uncomfortable with this situation: too much uncertainty, no knowing when the robbers planned to strike or whether the cash centre was the actual target. His whole body tingled with anxiety.

Malm entered and positioned himself beside him, scanning the array of monitors.

‘Any news?’ Wisting asked.

‘The vehicle that’s going to empty the depot will be here in twenty minutes. Once that’s done, we’ll lock our own personnel inside. Then it’s a matter of waiting.’

He sat down, but stood up again when the phone rang. Wisting listened to his monosyllabic answers until he wrapped up the conversation. ‘Klaus Bang is on his way to Norway.’

Wisting visualised the man in the boat who had been photographed by the birdwatcher. ‘How is he travelling?’

‘By Colorline from Hirsthals. He’s booked tickets on the ferry docking in Larvik at two o’clock tonight.’

‘We’ll see he gets a warm welcome.’

Replacing his mobile phone in his pocket, Leif Malm surveyed the room. ‘Any coffee here?’

‘We have to use the fire crew’s kitchen,’ Wisting said, leading the way. The fire crew on duty had been given a brief resumé of the operation, with secrecy duly emphasised.

Each filled a cup in silence. The Emergency Squad leader took coffee to his colleagues, while Wisting and Leif Malm returned to the makeshift command centre. Malm stood in front of the map hanging on the wall. ‘Are your people in position?’ he asked.

Wisting glanced at his watch. It was almost three o’clock. ‘I would think so.’ He crossed over to the map. ‘We have five surveillance posts,’ he said, pointing to strategic points at the town’s entrance and exit roads. Simultaneously, the police radio crackled into life.

‘Kilo 0-5, this is kilo 4-1.’

It was Benjamin Fjeld’s voice. He was in a car beside the motorway exit.

Grabbing the police radio, Wisting pressed the send button.

‘
4-1: come in.
’

‘
A NOKAS cash service security van has just turned off from the E18. It should be with you in a couple of minutes.
’

Leif Malm nodded. This was one of the vehicles that collected cash from commercial businesses and delivered it to the cash centre. Today the driver would be instructed to fill his cargo hold instead of emptying it.

‘It’s expected,’ Wisting said.

‘It will be escorted to Oslo by two unmarked police cars,’ Malm clarified.

Wisting stood by the window, waiting for the security vehicle. Two minutes later, he spotted it in the downpour, swinging off the main road and driving behind the building. On one of the monitor screens, they saw it at the drive-in gate. The gate slid open and the van entered. Wisting reported his observations over the police radio.

‘They’ll take approximately half an hour,’ Leif Malm said. ‘Shall we order a pizza or something?’

Wisting did not feel hungry, but said yes thanks anyway. On the screen, two guards emerged from the cabin of the van. A man and a woman.

‘Perhaps you could order it,’ Malm suggested. ‘You must know the restaurants around here?’

About to answer, Wisting’s stood rooted to the spot. Two men in black overalls had suddenly appeared beside the guards.

‘What the hell!’ He knocked over his cup which fell to the floor and smashed. ‘Where did they come from?’ He tore the venetian blinds aside but saw no activity outside.

The men were wearing balaclavas. One was slightly taller and burlier than the other and had a machine gun hanging from a sling across his chest, while his companion pointed a revolver at the female guard’s head.

‘It’s started!’ Wisting shouted, grabbing the police radio.