Jo Nesbo - The Devil's star

‘Since you’re here, anyway…’ Waaler said finally. His voice sounded strained. ‘… perhaps you can put the handcuffs on our prisoner.’

Saturday. ‘Isn’t it wonderful to have someone to hate?’

It was almost midnight when for the second time Bjarne Moller met the press outside the entrance to Police HQ. Only the brightest of stars shone through the heat-haze over Oslo, but he had to shield his eyes against the flashbulbs and the camera lights. Short, stabbing questions rained down on him.

‘One at a time,’ Moller said, pointing to a raised arm. ‘And please introduce yourself.’

‘Roger Gjendem, Aftenposten. Has Sven Sivertsen confessed?’

‘At the present moment the suspect is being interviewed by the man leading the investigation, Inspector Tom Waaler. Until the interviews are over I cannot answer your question.’

‘Is it true that you found weapons and diamonds in Sivertsen’s case? And that the diamonds are identical to those you found on the victims’ bodies?’

‘I can confirm that this is true. Over there, yes please.’

A young woman’s voice. ‘Earlier this evening you said that Sven Sivertsen lives in Prague, and in fact I have been able to find out his official address. It’s a boarding house, but they say that he left there more than a year ago and no-one seems to know where he lives. Do you?’

The other journalists were taking notes before Moller answered.

‘Not yet.’

‘I managed to get talking to a couple of the residents there,’ the woman’s voice said with barely concealed pride. ‘They said Sven Sivertsen had a young girlfriend. They didn’t know her name, but one of them suggested she was a prostitute. Are the police aware of this?’

‘We weren’t until this minute,’ Moller said. ‘But we appreciate your help.’

‘And we do, too,’ shouted one voice in the crowd, followed by all-male hyena laughter. The woman smiled uncertainly.

A question in Ostfold dialect: ‘ Dagbladet. How’s his mother taking it?’

Moller caught the journalist’s eye and bit his lower lip to prevent himself from snarling in anger.

‘I cannot make any judgment on that. Yes. Please.’

‘ Dagsavisen. We’re wondering how it’s possible that Marius Veland’s body could lie for four weeks in the loft of his building, in the hottest summer ever without anyone discovering it.’

‘We are as yet uncertain about the precise timing of this, but it looks as if a plastic bag was used, similar to a suit bag which was then sealed and made airtight before being…’ Moller searched for the right words, ‘hung in the wardrobe in the loft of the student block.’

A low mumble ran through the throng of journalists and Moller wondered if he had given away too much detail.

Roger Gjendem was asking another question.

Moller saw his mouth moving as he listened to the tune that was buzzing round in his head. ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You.’ She had sung it so well on Beat for Beat, her sister, the one who was taking over the main role in the musical, what was her name again?

‘I apologise,’ Moller said. ‘Could you repeat that, please.’

Harry and Beate were sitting on a low wall set back from the jostling crowd of journalists, watching and smoking a cigarette. Beate had announced that she was a social smoker and took one from the packet that Harry had just bought.

Harry himself didn’t feel any need to be sociable. Just to sleep.

They saw Tom Waaler coming out of the main entrance smiling into the hail of flashbulbs going off. The shadows were dancing a victory jig against the wall of Police HQ.

‘He’ll be a celebrity now,’ Beate said. ‘The man who led the investigation and single-handedly arrested the Courier Killer.’

‘With two guns and stuff?’ Harry smiled.

‘Yes, it was just like the Wild West. And can you tell me why you would ask someone to put down a weapon they don’t have?’

‘Waaler probably meant the weapon Sivertsen was carrying. I would’ve done the same.’

‘Of course, but do you know where we found his gun? In his suitcase.’

‘For all Waaler knew, he could have been the fastest gun in the West from a standing suitcase.’

Beate laughed. ‘You’re coming afterwards for a beer, aren’t you?’

Their eyes met and her smile became fixed as her blush spread over her neck and face.

‘I didn’t mean…’

‘It’s fine. You can celebrate for us both, Beate. I’ve done my bit.’

‘You could come with us, anyway?’

‘Don’t think so. This was my last case.’

Harry flicked his cigarette away and it flew like a firefly through the night.

‘Next week I won’t be a policeman any more. Perhaps I ought to feel that there is something to celebrate, but I don’t.’

‘What will you do?’

‘Something else.’ Harry got up. ‘Something completely different.’

Waaler caught up with Harry in the car park.

‘Off so soon, Harry?’

‘Tired. What’s the taste of fame like?’

‘It was just a couple of photos for the papers. You’ve been there yourself, so you know what it’s like.’

‘If you’re thinking of that time in Sydney, they made me out to be trigger happy because I shot the man. You managed to catch yours alive. You’re the kind of police hero a social democracy likes to have.’

‘Do I detect the merest hint of sarcasm?’

‘Not at all.’

‘OK. I don’t care who they turn into a hero. If it improves the image of the police force, as far as I am concerned, they can paint a falsely romantic picture of people like me. At the station, we still know who the real hero was this time.’

Harry pulled out his car keys and stopped in front of his white Escort.

‘That was what I wanted to say, Harry. On behalf of everyone who was working with you. You solved the case, not me or anyone else.’

‘I was just doing my job, wasn’t I.’

‘Your job, yes. That was the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. Shall we sit in the car for a second?’

There was the sweet stench of petrol in the car. A hole rusted through somewhere, Harry guessed. Waaler refused a cigarette.

‘Your first task is arranged,’ Waaler said. ‘It isn’t easy and it’s not without danger, but if you carry it off, we’ll agree to make you a full partner.’

‘What is it?’ Harry said, blowing smoke over the rear-view mirror.

Waaler ran the tips of his fingers along the wires coming out of the hole in the dashboard where the radio had once been.

‘What did Marius Veland look like?’ he asked.

‘After four weeks in a plastic bag, what do you think?’

‘He was twenty-four years old, Harry. Twenty-four years old. Can you remember what you dreamed of when you were twenty-four, what you expected from life?’

Harry remembered.

Waaler gave a rueful smile.

‘The summer I turned twenty-two I went inter-railing with Geir and Solo. We ended up at the Italian Riviera, but the hotels were so expensive that we couldn’t afford to stay anywhere. Even though Solo had brought with him the whole of the takings from the till in his father’s kiosk the day we left. So we pitched our tent on the beach at night and spent the days walking round staring at the women, the cars and the boats. The strange thing was that we felt wealthy. Because we were twenty-two. We thought everything was for us, presents lying under the Christmas tree just waiting for us. Camilla Loen, Barbara Svendsen, Lisbeth Barli, they were all young. Perhaps they hadn’t got to the stage of being disappointed yet, Harry. Perhaps they were still waiting for Christmas.’

Waaler ran his hand over the dashboard.

‘I’ve just interrogated Sven Sivertsen, Harry. You can read the report later, but all I can tell you now is what’s going to happen. He’s a cold, calculating devil. He’s going to play insane. He’s going to fool the jury and create so much doubt for the psychologists that they won’t dare to send him to prison. In short, he’ll end up in a psychiatric department where he’ll show such sensational progress that he’ll be released after a few years. That’s what it’s like now, Harry. That’s how we deal with the human detritus we’re surrounded by. We don’t clean it up, we don’t throw it away; we just move it around a little. And we don’t see that when the house is a stinking, rat-infested hole, it’s too late. Just look at other countries where criminality has a firm foothold. Unfortunately we live in a country that is so rich at the moment that the politicians compete with each other to be the most open-handed. We’ve become so soft and nice that no-one dares to take the responsibility for doing unpleasant things any more. Do you understand?’