Jo Nesbo - The Devil's star

Sivertsen’s laugh was high-pitched, like a girl’s.

‘Isn’t that a wonderful paradox, Hole? Here we are, an arms smuggler and a flatfoot, chained together and totally dependent on one another, and still we’re puzzling how to kill each other?’

‘True paradoxes don’t exist,’ Harry said. ‘What do you want?’

‘I want,’ said Sivertsen, raising the chisel in the air and holding it so that the handle pointed at Harry, ‘you to find the person who made it look as if I’d killed four people. If you can do that, then you can have Waaler’s head served on a silver platter. You scrub my back and I’ll scrub yours.’

Harry gave Sivertsen an intense glare. Their handcuffs rubbed together.

‘OK,’ Harry said. ‘But let’s do things in the right order. First we put Waaler behind bars. That done, we can work undisturbed and I can help you.’

Sivertsen shook his head.

‘I’m aware of the case against me. I’ve had an entire day to think about it, Hole. The only thing I have to bargain with is my evidence against Waaler, and the only person I have to bargain with is you. The police have already received the bouquets for their triumph and so none of them is going to look into this case with fresh eyes and risk the success of the century being turned into the blunder of the century. The maniac who murdered these women wants me to take the rap. I’ve been set up. And I don’t have a chance in hell without help.’

‘Are you aware that Tom Waaler and his colleagues are busting a gut at this very moment to find us? For every hour that passes, they’ll be closer. And when – not if – they find us, we’re done for, both of us?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why take the risk? Given that what you say about the police is correct, that they won’t under any circumstances waste more time on this case, isn’t twenty years in prison still better than losing your life?’

‘Twenty years in prison is not a choice I have any more, Hole.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’ve just found out that something is about to change my life for ever.’

‘And that is?’

‘I’m going to be a father, Inspector Hole.’

Harry blinked twice.

‘You have to find the real murderer before Waaler finds us, Hole. It’s as simple as that.’

Sivertsen passed the chisel to Harry.

‘Do you believe me?’

‘Yes,’ Harry lied, stuffing the chisel into his jacket pocket.

The steel cables screamed as the lift began to move again.

Sunday Night. Fascinating Nonsense.

‘Hope you like Iggy Pop,’ Harry said handcuffing Sven Sivertsen to the radiator under the window of room 406. ‘This is the only view we’re going to have for a while.’

‘Could be worse,’ Sven said looking up at the poster. ‘I saw Iggy and the Stooges in Berlin. I suppose before the owner of the poster was born.’

Harry checked his watch: 1.10. Waaler and his people had probably already checked his flat in Sofies gate and were doing the rounds of the hotels. It was impossible to say how much time they had left. Harry sank down into the sofa and rubbed his face with both palms.

Damned Sivertsen!

The plan had been so simple. Just find a safe place, then ring Bjarne Moller and the head of Kripos and let them hear Sven Sivertsen’s testimony over the telephone. Then tell them they had three hours to arrest Tom Waaler before Harry rang the press and dropped the bombshell. A simple choice. All he and Sivertsen had to do was sit tight until they had confirmation that Tom Waaler was in the slammer. Afterwards, Harry would phone Roger Gjendem at Aftenposten and ask him to ring the head of Kripos for a comment about the arrest. Only then – when it was public – would Harry and Sivertsen crawl out of their hidey-hole.

But for Sivertsen and his ultimatum, it would have been relatively plain sailing.

‘What if…’

‘Don’t try it, Hole.’

Sivertsen didn’t even look at him.

Damn him!

Harry checked his watch again. He knew he had to stop doing it. He had to shut out the time element and collect his thoughts, regroup, improvise, see what options the situation threw up. Shit!

‘OK,’ Harry said, closing his eyes. ‘Give me your side of things.’

The handcuffs rattled as Sven Sivertsen leaned forwards.

Harry stood by the open window smoking a cigarette while listening to Sven Sivertsen’s high-pitched voice. He began with the time when he was 17 and met his father for the first time.

‘My mother thought I was in Copenhagen, but I’d gone to Berlin to search him out. He lived in a huge house with guard dogs in the area around Tiergarten Park, where the embassies are. I persuaded the gardener to accompany me to the front door and I rang the bell. When he opened up it was like looking at a mirror image. We just stood there gawping at each other. I didn’t even need to say who I was. In the end he began to cry and embraced me. I stayed with him for four weeks. He was married and had three children. I didn’t ask him what he did and he didn’t tell me. Randi, his wife, was staying at some expensive sanatorium in the Alps with an incurable heart ailment. It sounded like something out of a romance novel, and I did sometimes wonder if that was what had inspired him to send her there. There was no doubt that he loved her. Or it might be more correct to say that he was in love. When he talked about her dying, it sounded like something out of a women’s weekly mag. One afternoon one of his wife’s girlfriends came by. We drank tea and my father said that it was fate that had sent Randi his way, but they had loved each other so much and so shamelessly that fate had punished them by letting her wither away with her beauty still untarnished. He could say things like that without a hint of a blush. That night, when I couldn’t sleep, I went downstairs to rummage around in his drinks cabinet and saw the girlfriend sneaking out of his bedroom.’

Harry nodded. Was there more of a nip in the night air, or was he imagining it? Sivertsen shifted position.

‘During the day I had the house to myself. He had two daughters, one fourteen and the other sixteen. Bodil and Alice. For them, of course, I was incredibly exciting. An unheard of older half-brother who had dropped in out of the blue. Both of them fell in love with me, but I chose Bodil, the younger one. One day she came home early from school and I took her into her father’s bedroom. She was removing the blood-stained sheets afterwards when I chased her out, locked the door, gave the key to the gardener and asked him to give it to my father. At breakfast the next morning Father asked me if I wanted to work for him. That was how I got into smuggling diamonds.’

Sivertsen broke off.

‘Time’s ticking away,’ Harry said.

‘I worked from Oslo. Apart from a couple of early blunders that led to two conditional sentences, I did well. My speciality was going through customs at airports. It was very easy. Just dress up as a respectable person and don’t look frightened. And I wasn’t frightened; I didn’t give a damn. I used to wear a priest’s dog collar. Of course it’s such an obvious trick that it can arouse the suspicions of the customs people right away, but the thing is you also have to know how a priest walks, how he wears his hair, what shoes he likes, the way he holds his hands and the facial expression he uses. If you learn these things, you’ll almost never be stopped. A customs officer may still be suspicious, but the threshold for stopping priests is higher. Any customs officer going through a priest’s suitcase without finding anything while long-haired hippies stroll through is bound to be the subject of complaints. The customs set-up is like any other. They’re bent on giving the public a positive – though erroneous – impression that they’re doing a good job.