Harry Hole Mysteries 3-Book Bundle (172 page)

‘I’ll tell Hans Christian. And then I’ll buy the plane ticket for tomorrow, darling.’

‘I’ll be waiting in Bangkok.’

A small silence.

‘But you’re wanted, Harry. How are you going to board the plane without—’

‘Next.’ Next?

Harry opened his eyes again and saw the woman behind the desk smiling at him.

He stepped forward and gave her his ticket and passport. Watched her type in the name on the passport.

‘I can’t find you here, herr Nybakk …’

Harry put on a reassuring smile. ‘In fact I was booked on the plane to Bangkok in ten days’ time, but I rang an hour and a half ago and had it changed to this evening.’

The woman pressed some more keys. Harry counted the seconds. Breathed in. Out. In.

‘There it is, yes. Late bookings don’t always show up right away. But here it says you’re travelling with an Irene Hanssen.’

‘She’s travelling as previously planned,’ Harry said.

‘Oh, yes. Any luggage to check in?’

‘No.’

More pressing of keys.

Then she frowned. Opened the passport again. Harry steeled himself. She placed the boarding card into the passport and gave it to him. ‘You’d better hurry, herr Nybakk. Boarding has already started. Have a pleasant trip.’

‘Thank you,’ Harry said with rather more sincerity than he had anticipated and ran to security.

It was only on the other side of the X-ray machine, when he was about to pick up keys and Martine’s mobile phone, that he noticed he had received a text. He was about to save it with all Martine’s other messages when he saw the sender had a short name. B. Beate.

He sprinted to gate 54. Bangkok, final call.

Read it.

‘Got the last list. There’s one address that wasn’t on the list you got from Bellman. Blindernveien 74.’

Harry stuffed the phone in his pocket. There was no queue by the counter. He opened his passport and the official checked it and the boarding card. Looked at Harry.

‘The scar’s newer than the photo,’ Harry said.

The official studied him. ‘Get a new photo, Nybakk,’ he said and returned the documents. Motioned to the person behind Harry to indicate it was their turn.

Harry was free. Saved. A whole new life lay before him.

By the gate there were still five stragglers in the queue.

Harry looked at his boarding card. Business class. He had never travelled in anything but economy, even for Herman Kluit. Stig Nybakk had done well. Dubai had done well.
Were
doing well. Are doing well. Now, this evening, at this moment, the punters were standing there, their faces quivering and hungry, waiting for the guy in the Arsenal shirt to say: ‘Come on.’

Two left in the queue.

Blindernveien 74.

I’ll join you. Harry closed his eyes to hear Rakel’s voice again. And then it was there:
Are you a policeman? Is that what you’ve become? A robot
,
a slave of the anthill and ideas other people have had?

Was he?

It was his turn. The woman at the desk raised her eyebrows.

No, he was not a slave.

He passed her his boarding card.

He walked. Walked down the tunnel to the plane. Through the glass he could see the lights of a plane coming in to land. Coming over Tord Schultz’s house.

Blindernveien 74.

Mikael Bellman’s blood under Gusto’s nails.

Shit, shit, shit!

Harry boarded, found his seat and sank deep into a leather seat. God, the softness of it. He pressed a button and the seat went back and back and back until he was lying in a horizontal position. He closed his eyes again, wanted to sleep. Sleep. Until one day he awoke and was changed and in a very different place. He searched for her voice. But instead found another, in Swedish:

I have a false priest’s collar; you have a false sheriff’s badge. How unshakeable is your faith in your gospel actually?

Bellman’s blood. ‘… down in Østfold. It would have been impossible for him to …’

Everything fits.

Harry felt a hand on his arm and opened his eyes.

A Thai flight attendant with high cheekbones smiled down at him.

‘I’m sorry, sir, but you must raise your seat into the upright position before take-off.’

Upright position.

Harry breathed in. Took out his mobile phone. Looked at the last call.

‘Sir, you have to turn off—’

Harry held up his hand and pressed ‘Call’.

‘Thought we were never to speak again,’ Klaus Torkildsen answered.

‘Exactly where in Østfold?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Bellman. Where in Østfold was he when Gusto was killed?’

‘Rygge, by Moss.’

Harry put his phone back and stood up.

‘Sir, the seat belt sign—’

‘Sorry,’ Harry said. ‘This isn’t my flight.’

‘I’m sure it is. We’ve checked passenger numbers and—’

Harry strode back down the plane. He heard the patter of feet behind him.

‘Sir, we’ve already shut—’

‘Then open it.’

A purser had joined them. ‘Sir, I’m afraid the rules don’t allow us to open—’

‘I’m out of pills,’ Harry said, fumbling in his jacket pocket. Found the empty bottle with the Zestril label and held it to the purser’s face. ‘I’m Mr Nybakk, see? Do you want a passenger to have a heart attack on board when we’re over … let’s say Afghanistan?’

It was past eleven o’clock, and the airport express was almost empty as it raced towards Oslo. Harry absent-mindedly read the news on the screen hanging from the ceiling. He’d had a plan, a plan for a new life. Now he had twenty minutes to come up with a new one. It was lunacy. He could have
been on a plane to Bangkok. But that was the point; he
could
have been on a plane to Bangkok now. He simply didn’t have the ability, it was a deficiency, an operating fault; his club foot was that he had never been able to tell himself he didn’t care, to forget, to clear off. He could drink, but he sobered up. He could go to Hong Kong, but he came back. He was undoubtedly a very damaged person. And the effect of the tablets Martine had given him was wearing off; he needed more, the pain was making him dizzy.

Harry had his eyes focused on headlines about quarterly figures and sport results when it struck him: what if that was what he was doing now? Clearing off. Chickening out.

No. It was different this time. He had had the date of the flight changed to tomorrow night, the same flight as Rakel. He had even reserved a seat for her beside him in business class and paid for an upgrade. He had wondered whether to tell her about what he was doing, but he knew what she would think. He hadn’t changed. There was still the same madness driving him. Nothing would change, ever. But sitting there, beside each other, with the acceleration pressing them backwards into the seat and then feeling the lift, the lightness, the inexorable, she would finally know they had left the old days behind them, beneath them, that their journey had begun.

Harry got off the airport express, crossed the bridge to the Opera House, walked over the Italian marble towards the main entrance. Through the glass he could see the elegantly dressed people making conversation, with finger food and drinks behind the ropes in the expensive foyer.

Outside the entrance stood a man wearing a suit and an earpiece, his hands in front of his crotch as if facing a free kick. Broad-shouldered, but no beef. Trained eyes that had spotted Harry long ago, and were now studying things
around
him that might have some significance. Which could only mean that he was a policeman in PST, the Norwegian security service, and that the Chief of Police or someone from the government was present. The man took two steps towards Harry as he approached.

‘Sorry, private party …’ he began, but stopped when he saw Harry’s ID card.

‘It’s nothing to do with your Chief, pal,’ Harry said. ‘Just need to have a few words with someone. Official business.’

The man nodded, spoke into the microphone on his lapel and let Harry pass.

The foyer was a huge igloo which Harry could see was populated by many faces he recognised despite his long exile: the press poseurs, TV’s talking heads, entertainers from sport and politics, plus culture’s
éminences
more or less
grises
. And Harry saw what Isabelle Skøyen had meant when she’d said it was hard to find a tall enough date when she wore heels. She was easy to spot towering above the assembled guests.

Harry strode over the rope and ploughed a path through with a repeated ‘sorry’ as white wine slopped around him.

Isabelle was speaking to a man who was half a head smaller than her, but her ingratiating, enthusiastic facial expression suggested to Harry that he was several heads higher than her in power and status. Harry was three metres away when a man appeared in front of him.

‘I’m the officer who’s just been talking to your colleague outside,’ Harry said. ‘I’m going to have a word with her.’

‘Be my guest,’ said the guard, and Harry thought he could hear a certain subtext.

Harry took the last steps.

‘Hi, Isabelle,’ he said and saw the surprise on her face. ‘Hope I’m not interrupting … your career?’

‘Inspector Hole,’ she answered with a screech of laughter as if sharing an in-joke.

The man beside her was quick on the draw with his hand and said – rather superfluously – his name. A long career on the top floor of City Hall had presumably taught him that popularity with the common man was rewarded on election day. ‘Did you enjoy the performance, Inspector?’

‘Yes and no,’ Harry said. ‘I was mostly glad it was over, and I was on my way home when I realised that there were a couple of things I hadn’t got clear.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, as Don Giovanni’s a thief and a philanderer surely it’s only right and proper that he should be punished in the final act. I think I understood who he is, the statue that comes to Don Giovanni and takes him down to hell. What I’m wondering, however, is who told him he could find Don Giovanni at that particular spot? Can you answer me that …?’ Harry turned. ‘Isabelle?’

Isabelle’s smile was rigid. ‘If you’ve got a conspiracy theory it’s always interesting to hear. But perhaps another time. Right now I’m speaking to—’

‘I need to have a couple of words with her,’ Harry said, facing her interlocutor. ‘By your leave, of course.’

Harry saw that Isabelle was about to protest, but the interlocutor was quicker. ‘Of course.’ He smiled, nodded and turned to an elderly couple who had been queueing for an audience.

Harry took Isabelle by the arm and led her towards the toilet signs.

‘You stink,’ she hissed as he placed his hands on her shoulders and pressed her up against the wall beside the entrance to the men’s toilets.

‘Suit’s been in the skip a couple of times,’ Harry said, and saw they were attracting a few looks from people around them. ‘Listen, we can do this in a civilised or a brutal way. What’s the basis of your cooperation with Mikael Bellman?’

‘Go to hell, Hole.’

Harry kicked the door to the toilets open and dragged her in.

A man in a dinner jacket by a sink sent them an astonished look from the mirror as Harry slammed Isabelle against a cubicle door and forced his forearm against her throat.

‘Bellman was at yours when Gusto was killed,’ Harry wheezed. ‘Gusto had Bellman’s blood under his nails. Dubai’s burner is Bellman’s closest colleague and friend. If you don’t talk now I’ll ring my man at
Aftenposten
and have it in tomorrow’s paper. And then I’ll place everything I have on the public prosecutor’s desk. So what’s it going to be?’

‘Excuse me.’ It was the man in the dinner jacket. He maintained a respectful distance. ‘Any help required?’

‘Get the fuck out of here!’

The man seemed shocked, perhaps not so much at the words but the fact that it was Isabelle who had uttered them, and he shuffled out.

‘We were shagging,’ Isabelle said, half strangled.

Harry let her go and he could tell from her breath that she had been drinking champagne.

‘You and Bellman were shagging?’

‘I know he’s married, and we were shagging, that’s all,’ she said, rubbing her neck. ‘Gusto appeared out of nowhere and clawed Bellman as he was being thrown out. If you want to tell the press about it, go ahead. I assume you’ve
never
shagged a married woman. But you might consider what press headlines will do to Bellman’s wife and children.’

‘And how did you and Bellman meet? Are you trying to tell me this triangle with Gusto and you two is quite by chance?’

‘How do you think people in positions of power meet, Harry? Look around you. Look at who’s here for the party. Everyone knows Bellman’s going to be Oslo’s new Chief of Police.’

‘And that you’re going to get a position in City Hall?’

‘We met at some opening or other, a premiere, a private view, don’t remember what. That’s how it is. You can ring and ask Mikael when it was. But not tonight perhaps, he’s having quality time with the family. That’s just … well, that’s how it is.’

That’s how it is. Harry stared at her.

‘What about Truls Berntsen?’

‘Who?’

‘He’s their burner, isn’t he? Who sent him to Hotel Leon to take care of me? Was it you? Or Dubai?’

‘What in heaven’s name are you going on about?’

Harry could see. She really didn’t have a clue who Truls Berntsen was.

Isabelle Skøyen started to laugh. ‘Harry, don’t look so crestfallen.’

He could have been sitting on a plane to Bangkok. To another life.

He was already on his way out.

‘Wait, Harry.’

He turned. She was leaning against the cubicle door and had pulled up her skirt. So high that he could see stocking tops and garters. A lock of blonde hair fell over her brow.

‘Now that we have the toilets all to ourselves …’

Harry met her eyes. They were misty. Not with alcohol, not with desire, there was something else. Was she crying? Tough, lonely, self-despising Isabelle Skøyen? And? She was yet another bitter person willing to ruin others’ lives to get what they thought was their birthright: to be loved.

The door continued to swing both ways after Harry had left, chafed against the rubber seal, faster and faster, like an accelerating and final round of applause.