Jo Nesbo - The Devil's star

On this day, however, he was pulled up before he got into his stride.

‘Good morning,’ said the man who had appeared from nowhere and who now stood in front of him. He was wearing a short, black leather jacket and aviator sunglasses even though it was fairly dark in the multi-storey car park. Roger knew a policeman when he saw one.

‘Good morning,’ Roger said.

‘I’ve got a message for you, Gjendem.’

The man’s arms hung straight down. His hands were covered in black hair. Roger thought that he would have appeared more natural if he had kept them in the pockets of his leather jacket. Or behind his back. Or folded in front of him. As it was, you had the impression he was about to use his hands for something, but it was impossible to guess what.

‘Yeah?’ Roger asked. He heard the echo of his own ‘e’ vibrate briefly between the walls, the sound of a question mark.

The man leaned forward.

‘Your brother’s doing time in Ullersmo,’ the man said.

‘So what?’

Roger knew that the morning sun was shining outside in Oslo, but down in the car catacombs it had suddenly turned ice cold.

‘If you care about what happens to him, you need to do us a favour. Are you listening, Gjendem?’

Roger nodded in amazement.

‘If Inspector Harry Hole rings you, we want you to do the following. Ask where he is. If he won’t tell you, arrange to meet him. Say that you won’t risk printing his story until you’ve met him face to face. The meeting must be arranged before midnight tonight.’

‘What story?’

‘He might make unfounded allegations against a police inspector whose name I cannot reveal, but you needn’t bother about that. It’ll never get into print anyway.’

‘But -’

‘Are you listening? After he rings, I want you to phone this number and tell us where Hole is or where and when you’ve arranged to meet him. Is that clear?’

He put his left hand in his pocket and passed Roger a slip of paper.

Roger read the number and shook his head. As frightened as he was, he could feel laughter bubbling up inside him. Or maybe his fear was precisely the reason.

‘I know you’re a policeman,’ Roger said, repressing his smile. ‘You must know that this won’t wash. I’m a journalist, I can’t -’

‘Gjendem.’

The man took off his sunglasses. Even though it was dark, the pupils were just small dots in the grey irises.

‘Your little brother’s in cell A107. Every Tuesday – like most of the other old lags – he has his junk smuggled in. He injects it straightaway, never checks it. That’s been fine so far. Do you see what I mean?’

Roger wondered if his ears had deceived him. He knew they had not.

‘Good,’ the man said. ‘Any questions?’

Roger had to moisten his lips before he could answer.

‘Why do you think that Harry Hole will call me?’

‘Because he’s desperate,’ said the man, putting his sunglasses back on. ‘And because you gave him a business card in front of the National Theatre yesterday. Have a good day, Gjendem.’

Roger did not move until the man had gone. He breathed in the clammy, dusty underground air of the car park. And he walked the short distance to the Post House with slow, reluctant steps.

The telephone numbers hopped and danced on the screen in front of Klaus Torkildsen in the control room at Telenor Operations Centre, Oslo region. He had told his colleagues that he was not to be disturbed and had locked the door.

His shirt was drenched with sweat. Not because he had been jogging to work. He had walked – neither particularly quickly nor slowly – and he had been heading for his office when the receptionist had called his name and stopped him. His surname. He preferred that.

‘Visitor,’ she had said, pointing to a man sitting on the sofa in reception.

Klaus Torkildsen was stunned. Stunned because he had a job that did not include receiving visitors. This was not by chance; his choice of profession and private life were controlled by a desire to avoid all direct contact with human beings other than was absolutely necessary.

The man on the sofa had got up, told him he was from the police and then asked him to sit down. Klaus had sunk into a chair, sunk further and further down as he felt the sweat breaking out over his whole body. The police. He had not had anything to do with them for 15 years and, even though he had only received a fine, he still reacted with immediate paranoia whenever he saw a uniform in the street. From the moment the man had opened his mouth, his pores had flowed.

The man went straight to the heart of the matter and told him they needed him to trace a mobile phone for them. Klaus had done a similar job for them before. It was relatively simple. A mobile phone, when it is switched on, transmits a signal every half-hour, and this is registered by the phone masts scattered around town. In addition, the phone masts pick up and register all the conversations of subscribers, calls both in and out. From the coverage of individual phone masts they could take cross-bearings to pinpoint the location of a mobile phone to within a square kilometre. That was what had caused such a stink the one time he had been involved, in the nature reserve near Kristiansand.

Klaus had said that wire tapping had to be ratified by the boss, but the man had said it was urgent, that they didn’t have time to go through official channels. In addition to monitoring a particular mobile phone number (which Klaus had discovered belonged to a certain Harry Hole) the man also wanted him to monitor the lines belonging to a number of people whom the wanted man might conceivably contact. He had also given Klaus a list of telephone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Klaus asked him why they had specifically come to him. After all, there were other people who had more experience of this than he. The sweat froze on his back and he began to shiver a little in the air-conditioned reception area.

‘Because we know that you’ll keep your mouth shut about this, Torkildsen. Just as we will keep our mouths shut to your superiors and colleagues about the time you were literally caught with your trousers down in Stens Park in January 1987. The undercover policewoman said you were stark naked under the coat. Must have been damned cold…’

Torkildsen swallowed hard. They had said that it would be taken off public records after a few years.

He swallowed again.

It seemed absolutely impossible to trace the mobile phone. It was switched on; he knew that as he received a signal every half-hour, but it came from a different place every time, as if it were trying to tease him.

He concentrated on the addresses on the list. One was an internal number at Kjolberggata 21. He checked the number. It was Krimteknisk, the Forensics department.

Beate picked up the phone as soon as it rang.

‘Well?’ said a voice at the other end.

‘Not looking good so far,’ she said.

‘Mm.’

‘I have two men developing the photographs and they’ll land on my desk the second they’re finished.’

‘And no Sven Sivertsen.’

‘If he was by the Fountain in Frogner Park when Barbara Svendsen was killed, he was unlucky. He’s definitely not in any of the photographs I’ve seen and we’re talking close on a hundred so far.’

‘White, short-sleeved shirt and blue -’

‘You’ve said all that before, Harry.’

‘No faces even similar?’

‘I’ve got a good eye for faces, Harry. He isn’t in any of the photos.’

‘Mm.’

She waved in Bjorn Holm with a new stack of photographs stinking of developer reagent. He dumped them down on her desk, pointed to one, gave a thumbs-up and disappeared.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I’ve just got some new ones in. They’re from the group who were there on Saturday at five o’clock. Now let me see…’