‘But he couldn’t shake off the episode,’ Kari said. ‘So he went to see his doctor. Who discovered that he did indeed have heart trouble and had him admitted to hospital immediately. And that’s why Leif Krognæss remembers a man he met only briefly at a lay-by on the old main road by the River Drammen.’
The River Drammen, Simon thought.
‘Yep,’ Westad said. ‘Leif Krognæss said the guy saved his life. But that’s not the point. The point is that the medical examiner’s report states that Kjersti Morsand was killed at the very time the men were sitting in the lay-by.’
Simon nodded. ‘And the strand of hair? You haven’t checked how it could have ended up at the crime scene?’
Westad shrugged. ‘Like I said, the suspect has an alibi.’
Simon was aware that Westad had yet to mention the boy’s name. He cleared his throat. ‘It could appear that the hair was planted. And if Sonny Lofthus was granted day release in order to make it look like he committed the murder, then one of the prison officers from Staten must be in on it. Is that why it’s been hushed up?’
Henrik Westad pushed his mug across Kari’s desk; perhaps the taste no longer appealed to him. ‘I’ve been told to hush it up,’ he said. ‘Someone higher up has made it very clear to my boss to leave the matter alone until they’ve had a chance to have another look at it.’
‘They want to double-check the facts before the scandal becomes public,’ Kari said.
‘Let’s hope that’s all it is,’ Simon said quietly. ‘So why are you talking to us if you’ve been told to keep quiet, Westad?’
Westad shrugged again. ‘It’s tough to be the only one who knows. And when Kari mentioned that she was working with Simon Kefas . . . Well, people say you have integrity.’
Simon looked at Westad. ‘You know that’s just another word for troublemaker, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Westad said. ‘I don’t want any trouble. I just don’t want to be the only one who knows.’
‘Because it feel safer that way?’
Westad shrugged a third time. He no longer seemed quite so tall and broad when he was sitting down. And despite the jumper he looked like he was cold.
There was complete silence in the rectangular boardroom.
Hugo Nestor’s attention was fixed on the chair at the head of the table.
The high-backed chair covered with white buffalo hide was facing away from them.
The man in the chair had demanded an explanation.
Nestor lifted his gaze to the painting on the wall above the chair. It depicted a crucifixion. Grotesque, bloody and excessive in rich detail. The man on the crucifix had two horns on his forehead and burning, red eyes. Apart from those details, the likeness was obvious. Rumour had it that the artist had painted the picture after the man in the high-backed chair had cut off two of his fingers because he owed him money. The bit about the fingers was true, Nestor had witnessed it himself. Rumour also had it that only twelve hours had passed between the artist exhibiting the painting in his gallery and the man in the chair removing it. That, along with the man’s liver. That rumour wasn’t true. It had taken eight hours, and they had taken his spleen.
As far as the buffalo hide was concerned, Nestor could neither confirm nor deny the story that the man in the chair had paid 13,500 dollars to hunt and kill a white buffalo, the most sacred animal for Lakota Sioux Indians, that he had shot it with a crossbow and when the animal had refused to die even after two arrows to its heart, the man in the chair had straddled the half-ton animal and used his thigh muscles to wring its neck. But Nestor saw no reason to doubt the story. The weight difference between the animal and the man was minimal.
Hugo Nestor shifted his eyes from the painting. There were three other people in the room apart from him and the man on the buffalo hide chair. Nestor rolled his shoulders and felt his shirt stick to his back under the suit jacket. He rarely sweated. Not only because he avoided the sun, poor-quality wool, exercise, lovemaking and other physical exertions, but because he – according to his doctor – had a fault in his inbuilt thermostat which would otherwise cause people to sweat. So even when he did exert himself, he never sweated, but he risked overheating. It was a genetic disposition which proved what he had always known: that his alleged parents weren’t his real parents, that his dreams about lying in a cradle in a place that looked like photographs he had seen of Kiev in the 1970s were more than just dreams, they were his earliest childhood memories.
But he was sweating now. Even though he was the bearer of good news, he was sweating.
The man in the chair hadn’t raged. Hadn’t fumed about the money and drugs that had been stolen from Kalle Farrisen’s office. Not screamed how was it possible that Sylvester had gone missing. Or roared why the hell hadn’t they found that Lofthus boy yet. Despite everyone knowing what was at stake. There were four scenarios and three of them were bad. Bad scenario number one: Sonny killed Agnete Iversen, Kalle and Sylvester and he would continue to kill anyone they work with. Bad scenario number two: Sonny is arrested, confesses and reveals the names of the real killers in the murders he has served time for. Bad scenario number three: in the absence of the boy’s confession, Yngve Morsand is arrested for his wife’s murder, can’t handle the pressure and tells the police what really happened.
When Morsand had first come to them and said that he wanted his unfaithful wife killed, Nestor had taken it to mean that he wanted to hire a hit man. But Morsand insisted on the pleasure of killing his wife himself, he just wanted them to arrange for someone else to take the fall since he, as the cuckolded husband, would automatically be the police’s prime suspect. And at the right price everything is for sale. In this case, three million kroner. A reasonable hourly rate for a life sentence, Nestor had argued, and Morsand had agreed. Afterwards when Morsand had explained how he wanted to tie up the unfaithful bitch, put the saw to her forehead and look her in the eyes while he cut off her head, Nestor had felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up in a mixture of horror and excitement. They had arranged everything with Arild Franck: the boy’s day release, his geographical location, and sent him off with one of Franck’s trusted, corrupt and well-paid prison officers, a hermit of a chubby chaser from Kaupang who spent his money on cocaine, paying off his debts and on hookers so fat and ugly, you would have thought the money would change hands in the opposite direction.
The fourth and only good scenario was very simple: find the boy and kill him. It should be straightforward. It should have been done long ago.
And yet the man spoke calmly in his deep, murmuring voice. And it was the voice that made Nestor sweat. From the tall white chair the voice had asked Nestor for an explanation. That was all. An explanation. Nestor cleared his throat, hoping that his voice wouldn’t betray his terror, which was always present when he was in the same room as his boss.
‘We went back to the house to look for Sylvester. All we found was an empty armchair with a bullet hole to the back. We’ve checked with our contact in Telenor’s operations centre, but none of their base stations has picked up a signal from Sylvester’s mobile since late last night. This means that either Lofthus destroyed his phone or his phone is somewhere with no coverage. In any case, I think there’s a real risk that Sylvester is no longer alive.’
The chair at the head of the table turned slowly and the man came into view. The bulging body, muscles that strained all the seams of his suit, the high forehead, the old-fashioned moustache, the dense eyebrows over a deceptively sleepy gaze.
Hugo Nestor tried to meet that gaze. Nestor had killed women, men and children, he had looked them in the eye while he did it, without even blinking. Quite the opposite, he had studied them to see if he could see it – mortal fear, the certain knowledge of what was about to happen, any insight the dying might gain at the threshold to the hereafter. Like that Belarus girl whose throat he had cut when the others were unwilling. He had stared into her pleading eyes. It was as if he got off on a mixture of his own fe
elings, his rage at the others’ and the woman’s capitulation and weakness. Got off on the excitement of holding a life in his hands and deciding whether – and indeed when – he would carry out the act that would end it. He could extend her life by a second, and then another second. And another one. Or not. It was entirely up to him. And it struck him that this was the closest he would ever come to the sexual ecstasy which people spoke about, a union which for him was only associated with mild discomfort and an embarrassing attempt at coming across as a so-called normal person. He had read somewhere that one individual in every hundred was asexual. It made him an exception. But it didn’t make him abnormal. On the contrary, he could concentrate on what really mattered, build his life, his reputation, enjoy the respect and fear of others without any distractions and the loss of energy that came from the sexual addiction other people were slaves to. Surely that was rational and – consequently – normal? He was a normal person who wasn’t frightened of, but, rather, curious about death. And, in addition, he had good news for his boss. But Nestor managed to hold his boss’s gaze for only five seconds before he had to look away. Because what he saw in it was colder and emptier than death and annihilation. It was perdition. The promise that you had a soul and that it would be taken from you.
‘But we’ve got a tip-off about where the boy might be,’ Nestor said.
The big man raised one of his distinctive eyebrows. ‘Who from?’
‘Coco. A drug dealer who lived at the Ila Centre until recently.’
‘The psycho with the stiletto, yes?’
Nestor had never be able to establish exactly how his boss got his information. He was never seen in the streets. Nestor had never met anyone who claimed to have spoken to him, let alone seen him. And yet he knew everything and that was the way it had always been. In the day of the mole that was not surprising, then his boss would have had access to practically everything the police did. But after they had killed Ab Lofthus when he was about to expose him, the mole’s activities appeared to have ceased. This was almost fifteen years ago now, and Nestor had accepted that he would probably never know the identity of the mole.
‘He talked about a young guy at Ila who had so much money that he paid his room-mate’s debt,’ Nestor said in a carefully rehearsed tone of voice and with what he thought was an East Slavic ‘r’. ‘Twelve thousand kroner in cash.’
‘No one at Ila ever pays off another junkie’s debts,’ said the Wolf, an older man who was responsible for the trafficking of girls.
‘Quite,’ Nestor said. ‘But this young guy did – even though his room-mate accused him of stealing some earrings. So I thought—’
‘You’re thinking about the money in Kalle’s safe?’ the big man said. ‘And the jewellery that was stolen at Iversen’s, yes?’
‘Yes. So I went to see Coco and showed him a picture of the guy. And he confirmed it was him, Sonny Lofthus. I even know his room number. 323. The question is now how we . . .’ Nestor pressed his fingertips together and smacked his lips as if he could taste the synonyms for ‘kill him’.
‘We won’t be able to get in,’ the Wolf said. ‘Or at least not without getting noticed. The gate is locked, there are receptionists and CCTV everywhere.’
‘We could use one of the residents for the job,’ said Voss, formerly head of a security company who had been sacked after being involved in the importation and dealing of anabolic steroids.
‘We’re not going to leave this to a junkie,’ the Wolf said. ‘Not only has Lofthus eluded our own – presumably competent – people, he would also appear to have killed one of them.’
‘So what do we do?’ Nestor said. ‘Lie in wait for him outside the centre? Install a sniper in the building opposite? Set fire to the centre and jam the fire exits?’
‘This isn’t the time for jokes, Hugo,’ Voss said.
‘You ought to know that I never joke.’ Nestor felt his face getting hot. Hot, but not sweaty. ‘If we don’t get him before the police—’
‘Good idea.’ The two words were spoken so quietly, they were barely audible. And yet they sounded like thunder in the room.
Silence followed.
‘What is?’ Nestor asked eventually.
‘Not taking him before the police do,’ said the big man.
Nestor looked around the room to make sure that he wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand before he asked: ‘What do you mean?’
‘Exactly what I said,’ whispered the big man, smiling briefly and aiming his gaze at the only person in the room who had kept silent until now. ‘You know what I mean, don’t you?’
‘I do,’ the man replied. ‘The boy will end up back at Staten Prison. Perhaps he’ll take his own life – just like his father?’
‘Good.’
‘I’ll tip off the police about where they can find the boy,’ the man said, raising his chin and easing the skin of his neck away from the shirt collar of his green uniform.
‘That won’t be necessary. I’ll deal with the police,’ said the big man.
‘You will?’ Arild Franck said, sounding surprised.
The big man turned and addressed the whole table. ‘What about this witness in Drammen?’
‘He’s in hospital, in Cardiology,’ Hugo Nestor heard someone say while he himself stared at the painting.
‘And what do we do about that?’
He stared.
‘What we have to,’ the bass voice replied.
He stared at the Twin hanging from the crucifix.
Hanging.
Martha sat in the attic.
Staring at the beam.
She had told her colleagues that she wanted to check the filing had been done properly. It was bound to be, she didn’t care about that. She didn’t care about anything these days. She was thinking about him, Stig, all the time and it was just as banal as it was tragic. She was in love. She had always believed she didn’t have the capacity for strong emotions. She’d had crushes before, obviously, lots of them, but never like this. The other times there had been butterflies in her stomach, it had been an exciting game with heightened senses and flushed cheeks. But this was . . . a disease. Something had invaded her body and was controlling her every thought and action. She was love-struck. Struck down by an illness, or by malign fate. It was an apt expression. This was excessive. It was unwanted. It was tearing her apart.
The woman who had hanged herself up here in the attic – had it been the same with her? Had she, too, fallen in love with a man whom she knew, in her heart of hearts, was a wrong ’un? And had she, too, been so blinded by love that she had started debating right and wrong with herself, trying to carve out a new morality which was compatible with this wonderful disease? Or had she – like Martha – only found out when she was in much too deep? During breakfast Martha had returned to room 323. She had checked the trainers again. They smelled of detergent. Who washes the soles of a pair of practically brand-new trainers unless they have something to hide? And why had it filled her with such despair that she had gone up to the attic? Dear God, she didn’t even want him.
She stared at the beam.
But she wouldn’t do what the dead woman had done; report him. She couldn’t. There had to be a reason, something she didn’t know. He wasn’t like that. In her job she had heard so many lies, excuses and versions of reality that ultimately she no longer believed that anyone was who they said they were. But one thing she did know: Stig was no cold-blooded killer.
She knew it because she was in love.
Martha buried her face in her hands. Felt the tears well up. Sat there, shaking in the silence. He had wanted to kiss her. She had wanted to kiss him. Still wanted to kiss him. Here, now, forever! Lose herself in this vast, wonderful, warm ocean of emotions. Take the drug, surrender, press the plunger, feel the high, be grateful and damned.
She heard sobbing. And felt the hairs stand up on her arm. Stared at the walkie-talkie. The tender whimpering of a baby.
She wanted to switch
off the walkie-talkie, but she didn’t. The crying sounded different this time. As if the child was scared and was calling out for her. But it was still the same child, always the same child. Her child. The lost child. Trapped in a vacuum, in a nothingness, trying to find its way home. And no one could or wanted to help it. No one dared. Because they didn’t know what it was and people fear the unknown. Martha listened to the crying. It rose in pitch and intensity. Then she heard a loud crackling and a hysterical voice:
‘Martha! Martha! Come in . . .’
Martha froze. What was that?
‘Martha! They’re raiding the centre! They’re armed! For God’s sake, where are you?’
Martha picked up the walkie-talkie and pressed the talk button. ‘What’s going on, Maria?’ She released the button.
‘They’re dressed in black and wearing masks, they have shields and guns and there are so many of them! You have to come downstairs!’
Martha got up and ran out of the door. She heard her own feet clatter down the steps. Flung open the door leading to the corridor to the second floor. Saw a man dressed in black spin round and point a shotgun or possibly a machine gun at her. Saw three others standing in front of the door to room 323. Two of them were swinging a short battering ram between them.
‘What—’ Martha began, but broke off when the man with the machine gun stepped in front of her and raised a finger to what she presumed were his lips under the black balaclava. She stiffened for a second before she realised that the only thing stopping her was his idiotic weapon.
‘I want to see a search warrant right now! You’ve no right to—’
There was a loud crash as the battering ram hit the door below the lock. The third man opened the door a fraction and tossed in something that looked like two hand grenades. Then the men turned away and covered their ears. Good God, were they . . .? The flash of light from the doorway was so bright that all three police officers cast shadows in the already well-lit corridor, and the explosion was so loud that Martha’s ears rang. Then they stormed into the room.