Harry Hole Mysteries 3-Book Bundle (151 page)

‘I wouldn’t have wanted you to come to my workplace,’ Beate said. ‘Heimen rang me and said you’d been asking about a list of phone calls, and he’d heard you’d been to see me. He warned me not to get mixed up in the Gusto case.’

‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘it’s good you could come here.’ He established eye contact with Rita who was serving beer at the other end of the room. He held up two fingers. She nodded. It was three years since he had been here, but she still understood the sign language of her ex-regular: a beer for the companion, a coffee for the alcoholic.

‘Was your friend any help with the list?’

‘Lots of help.’

‘So what did you find out?’

‘Gusto must have been broke at the end; his account had been blocked several times. He didn’t use his phone much, but he and Oleg had a few short conversations. He called his foster-sister, Irene, quite a bit, but the conversations suddenly finished some weeks before he died. Otherwise the calls were mostly to Pizza Xpress. I’ll go to Rakel’s afterwards and google these other names. What can you tell me about the analysis?’

‘The substance you bought is almost identical to early samples of violin we have examined. But there is a small difference in the chemical compound. And then there are the brown flecks.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s not an active pharmaceutical ingredient. It’s quite simply the coating that’s used on pills. You know, to make them easier to swallow or to give them a better taste.’

‘Is it possible to trace it to the producer?’

‘In theory, yes. But I’ve checked, and it transpires that medicine manufacturers generally make their own coating, which means there are several thousand of them over the globe.’

‘So we won’t make any headway there?’

‘Not with the coating,’ Beate said. ‘But on the inside of some fragments there are still remains of the pill. It was methadone.’

Rita brought the coffee and beer. Harry thanked her, and she left.

‘I thought methadone was liquid and came in bottles.’

‘The methadone used in the so-called medicine-assisted rehabilitation of drug addicts comes in bottles. So I rang up St Olav’s Hospital. They research opioids and opiates and told me that methadone pills are used for the treatment of pain.’

‘And in violin?’

‘They said it was possible that modified methadone could be used in its manufacture, yes.’

‘That only means violin is not made from scratch, but how does that help us?’

Beate curled her hand round the beer glass. ‘Because there are very few producers of methadone pills. And one of them is based in Oslo.’

‘AB? Nycomed?’

‘The Radium Hospital. They have their own research institute and have manufactured a methadone pill to treat severe pain.’

‘Cancer.’

Beate nodded. One hand transported the glass to her mouth while the other picked up something lying on the table.

‘From the Radium Hospital?’

Beate nodded again.

Harry picked up the pill. It was round, small and had an R stamped into the brown glazing.

‘Do you know what, Beate?’

‘No.’

‘I think Norway has created a new export.’

*   *   *

‘Do you mean to say that someone in Norway is producing and exporting violin?’ Rakel asked. She was leaning with her arms crossed against the door frame of Oleg’s room.

‘There are at least a couple of facts that suggest someone might be,’ Harry said, keying in the next name on the list he had been given by Torkildsen. ‘Firstly, the ripples spread outwards from Oslo. No one at Interpol had seen or heard about violin before it appeared in Oslo, and it is only now that you can find it on the streets of Sweden and Denmark. Secondly, the substance contains chopped-up methadone pills which I swear are made in Norway.’ Harry pressed search. ‘Thirdly, a pilot was arrested at Gardermoen with something which might have been violin, but was then swapped.’

‘Swapped?’

‘In which case we have a burner in the system. The point is that this pilot was leaving the country for Bangkok.’

Harry smelt the aroma of her perfume and knew she had moved from the door and was standing by his shoulder. The sheen from the computer screen was the only light in the dark room.

‘Foxy. Who’s that?’ Her voice was next to his ear.

‘Isabelle Skøyen. City Council. One of the people Gusto rang. Or to be precise, she rang him.’

‘The blood donor T-shirt’s a size too small for her, isn’t it?’

‘It’s probably part of a politician’s job to advertise giving blood.’

‘Are you actually a politician if you’re just a council secretary?’

‘Anyway, the woman says she’s AB rhesus negative, and then it’s simply your civic duty.’

‘Rare blood, yes. Is that why you’ve been looking at that picture for so long?’

Harry smiled. ‘There were lots of hits here. Horse breeder. “The Street Sweeper.” ’

‘She’s the one credited with putting all the drug gangs behind bars.’

‘Not all of them obviously. I wonder what she and Gusto could have had to talk about.’

‘Well, she heads the Social Services Committee’s work against drugs, so maybe she used him to gather general information.’

‘At half past one in the morning?’

‘Whoops!’

‘I’d better ask her.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you’d like that.’

He craned his head towards her. Her face was so close he could hardly focus on her.

‘Do I hear what I think I hear, my love?’

She laughed softly. ‘Not at all. She looks cheap.’

Harry inhaled slowly. She hadn’t moved. ‘And what makes you think I don’t like cheap?’ he asked.

‘And why are you whispering?’ Her lips moved so close to his he could feel the stream of air with her words.

For two long seconds the computer’s fan was all that could be heard. Then she suddenly straightened up. Sent Harry an absent-minded, far-off look and placed her hands against her cheeks as if to cool them down. Then she turned and left.

Harry leaned back, closed his eyes and cursed softly. Heard her clattering about in the kitchen. Breathed in a couple of times. Decided that what had just happened, had not happened. Tried to collect his thoughts. Then he went on.

He googled the remaining names. Some came up with ten-year-old results of skiing competitions or a report of a family get-together, others not even that. They were people who no longer existed, who had been withdrawn from modern society’s almost all-embracing floodlights, who had found shady nooks where they sat waiting for the next dose or else nothing.

Harry sat looking at the wall, at a poster of a guy with plumage on his head. ‘Jónsi’ was written underneath. Harry had a vague memory that it had something to do with the Icelandic band Sigur Rós. Ethereal sounds and relentless falsetto singing. Quite a long way from Megadeath and Slayer. But of course Oleg may have changed his taste. Or have been influenced. Harry settled back with his hands behind his head.

Irene Hanssen.

He had been surprised by the list of calls. Gusto and Irene had spoken on the phone almost every day, then abruptly stopped. After that he hadn’t even tried to ring her. As if they had fallen out. Or maybe Gusto had known that Irene could not be reached by phone. But then, a few hours before he was shot, Gusto had rung the landline at her home address. And had got an answer. The conversation had lasted one minute and twelve seconds. Why did he think that was odd? Harry tried to unravel his way back to where the thought had originated. But had to give up. He dialled the landline number. No answer. Tried Irene’s mobile. A voice told him that the account was temporarily blocked. Unpaid bills.

Money.

It started and finished with money. Drugs always did. Harry tried to remember the name Beate had told him. The pilot who had been arrested with powder in his hand luggage. The police memory still worked. He typed TORD SCHULTZ into directory enquiries.

A mobile number came up.

Harry opened a drawer in Oleg’s desk to find a pen. He lifted
Masterful Magazine
and his eye fell on a newspaper cutting in a plastic folder. He immediately recognised his own, younger face. He took out the folder and flicked through the other cuttings. They were all of cases Harry had worked on and where Harry’s name had been mentioned or his picture appeared. There was also an old interview in a psychology journal where he had answered – not without some irritation he seemed to remember – questions about serial killings. Harry closed the drawer. Cast around. He felt a need to smash something. Then he switched off the computer, packed the little suitcase, went into the hall and put on his suit jacket. Rakel came out. She brushed an invisible speck of dust from his lapel.

‘It’s so strange,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen you for ages, I had just begun to forget you, and then, here you are again.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Is that a good thing?’

A fleeting smile. ‘I don’t know. It’s both good and bad. Do you understand?’

Harry nodded and pulled her to him.

‘You’re the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,’ she said. ‘And the best. Even now, merely by being here, you can make me forget everything else. No, I’m not sure that’s good.’

‘I know.’

‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing to the suitcase.

‘I’m checking in to Hotel Leon.’

‘But …’

‘We’ll talk tomorrow. Goodnight, Rakel.’

Harry kissed her on the forehead, opened the door and went out into the warm autumn evening.

The boy in reception said he didn’t need to fill in another registration form and offered Harry the same room as last time, 301. Harry said that was fine so long as they fixed the broken curtain pole.

‘Is it broken again?’ the boy said. ‘It was the previous lodger. He had a bit of a temper, I’m afraid.’ He passed Harry the room key. ‘He was a policeman as well.’

‘Lodger?’

‘Yes, he was one of the permanent ones. An agent, undercover as you call him.’

‘Mm. Sounds like his cover wasn’t up to much, if
you
knew.’

The boy smiled. ‘Let me go and see if I have a curtain pole in the storeroom.’ The boy left.

‘Beret Man was very like you,’ a deep Swedish voice said. Harry turned.

Cato was sitting in a chair in what with a little charity could be termed the lobby. He looked drawn and was slowly shaking his head. ‘Very like you, Harry. Very passionate. Very patient. Very obstinate. Unfortunately. Not as tall as you, of course, and he had grey eyes. But the same police look about them, and just as lonely. And he died in the same place as you will. You should have gone, Harry. You should have caught the plane.’ He gesticulated something incomprehensible with his long fingers. His expression was so mournful that for a moment Harry wondered if the
old man was going to cry. He staggered to his feet as Harry turned to the boy.

‘Is what he says true?’

‘What who says?’ the boy asked.

‘Him,’ Harry said, turning to point at Cato. But he was already gone. He must have flitted into the darkness by the stairs.

‘Did the undercover cop die here, in my room?’

The boy stared at Harry before answering. ‘No, he went missing. He was washed ashore by the Opera House. Afraid I don’t have a curtain pole, but what about this nylon line? You can thread it through the curtains and tie it to the pole attachments.’

Harry nodded slowly.

It was gone two o’clock in the morning. Harry was still awake and on his last cigarette. On the floor lay the curtains and the thin nylon line. He could see the woman on the other side of the yard; she was dancing a soundless waltz, without a partner. Harry listened to the sounds of the town and watched the smoke curling up towards the ceiling. Studied the winding routes it took, the apparently random figures it made and tried to see a pattern in it.

IT TOOK TWO MONTHS FROM
the meeting between the old boy and Isabelle for the clean-up to begin.

The first ones to be busted were the Vietnamese. The newspapers said the cops had struck in nine places simultaneously, found five heroin stores and arrested thirty-six Vietcong. The week after it was the Kosovar Albanians’ turn. The cops used elite Delta troops to raid a flat in Helsfyr which the gypsy chief thought no one knew about. Then it was the turn of the North Africans and Lithuanians. The guy who was head of Orgkrim, a good-looking model-type with long eyelashes, said in the papers they had been given anonymous tip-offs. Over the next few weeks street sellers, everything from coal-black Somalis to milky-white Norwegians, were busted and banged up. But not a single one of us wearing an Arsenal shirt. It was already clear that we had more elbow room and the queues were getting longer. The old boy was recruiting some of the unemployed street sellers, but keeping his end of the bargain: heroin dealing had become less visible in Oslo city centre. We cut down on heroin imports as we earned so much more on violin. Violin was expensive, so some tried to switch to morphine, but they soon came back.

We were selling faster than Ibsen could make it.

One Tuesday we ran out at half past twelve, and since it was strictly
forbidden to use mobiles – the old boy thought Oslo was fricking Baltimore – I went down to the station and rang the Russian Gresso phone from one of the call boxes. Andrey said he was busy, but he would see what he could do. Oleg, Irene and I sat on the steps in Skippergata waving away punters and chilling. An hour later I saw a figure come limping towards us. It was Ibsen in person. He was furious. Yelling and cursing. Until he caught sight of Irene. Then it was as if the storm was over and his tone became more conciliatory. Followed us to the backyard where he handed over a plastic bag containing a hundred packages.

‘Twenty thousand,’ he said, holding out his paw. ‘This is cash on delivery.’ I took him aside and said that next time we ran out we could go to his place.

‘I don’t want visitors,’ he said.

‘I might pay more than two hundred a bag,’ I said.

He eyed me with suspicion. ‘Are you planning to start up on your own? What would your boss say to that?’

‘This is between you and me,’ I said. ‘We’re talking chicken-feed. Ten to twenty bags for friends and acquaintances.’