Jo Nesbo - The Devil's star

‘I hope that was wise,’ said Sven.

Bjorn Holm and Beate turned off busy Bygdoy alle and one moment later they found themselves in a silent road with misshapen detached timber houses on one side and fashionable brick apartment buildings on the other. The kerbsides came complete with rows of German makes of car.

‘Nobsville,’ Bjorn said.

They pulled up outside a doll’s-house-yellow building.

A voice answered the intercom after the second buzz.

‘Yes?’

‘Andre Clausen?’

‘I believe so, yes.’

‘Beate Lonn, police. May we come in?’

Andre Clausen was waiting for them in the doorway, dressed in a thigh-length dressing gown. He was scratching at the scab of a cut on his cheek as he made a half-hearted attempt at suppressing a yawn.

‘Apologies,’ he said. ‘I got home late last night.’

‘From Switzerland perhaps?’

‘No, I’ve just been up in the mountains. Come in.’

Clausen’s sitting room was a little on the small side for the collection of objets d’art he had, and Bjorn Holm was quick to establish that Clausen’s taste tended more towards Liberace than minimalism. Water trickled through a fountain in the corner where a naked goddess stretched up towards the Sistine paintings on the vaulted ceiling.

‘I’d like you to concentrate first and think about the time you saw the Courier Killer in the reception area at the solicitors’ office,’ Beate said. ‘And then look at this.’

Clausen took hold of the picture and studied it while running a finger across the cut on his cheek. Bjorn Holm examined the sitting-room area. He heard a shuffling noise behind a door and the sound of paws scratching against the other side.

‘Maybe,’ Clausen said.

‘Maybe?’ Beate was perched on the edge of the chair.

‘Very possible. The clothes are the same. The cycling helmet and the sunglasses too.’

‘Good. And the plaster on his knee. Did he have that?’

Clausen laughed softly.

‘As I told you, it is not my habit to study men’s bodies in such detail. But if it makes you happier, I can say that my immediate reaction is that this is the man I saw. Beyond that…’

He made a gesture with outstretched arms.

‘Thank you,’ Beate said getting up.

‘My pleasure,’ Clausen said, following them to the door where he proffered his hand. That was a strange thing to do, Holm thought, but he took it. But when Clausen proffered his hand to Beate, she shook her head with a little smile:

‘Sorry, but… you have blood on your fingers. And your chin’s bleeding.’

Clausen put a hand up to his face.

‘Indeed,’ he said smiling. ‘That’s Truls. My dog. Our games at the weekend got a little out of hand.’

He looked Beate in the eyes and his smile became broader and broader.

‘Goodbye,’ Beate said.

Bjorn Holm was not quite sure why he shuddered when he emerged into the heat again.

Klaus Torkildsen had pointed both fans in the room towards his face, but it felt as if they were only blowing the hot air from the machine back at him. He tapped his finger against the thick glass of the screen. Under the internal number in Kjolberggata. The subscriber had just rung off. That was the fourth time today that the person in question had spoken to precisely that mobile phone number. Brief conversations.

He double-clicked on the mobile phone number to find the subscriber’s name. A name appeared on the screen. He double-clicked to find an address and a profession. When it came up, Klaus sat looking at the information for a moment. Then he dialled the number he had been told to call when he had something to report.

A phone was picked up.

‘Hello?’

‘This is Torkildsen at Telenor. Who am I talking to?’

‘Never mind about that, Torkildsen. What have you got for us?’

Torkildsen could feel his sweaty upper arms sticking to his chest.

‘I’ve done a bit of checking around,’ he said. ‘Hole’s mobile is constantly on the move and impossible to trace. But there is another mobile which has rung the internal number in Kjolberggata several times.’

‘Right. Whose is it?’

‘The subscription is under the name of Oystein Eikeland. His profession is given as taxi driver.’

‘So?’

Torkildsen pushed out his lower lip and tried to blow hot air upwards to clear his glasses, which were wet with condensation.

‘I was just thinking that there could be a connection between a telephone that is continually on the move all over town and a taxi driver.’

The line went quiet at the other end.

‘Hello?’ Torkildsen said.

‘Received and understood,’ the voice said. ‘Keep tracing the numbers, Torkildsen.’

As Bjorn Holm and Beate wandered into reception in Kjolberggata, Beate’s mobile phone bleeped.

She whipped it out of her belt, read the display and placed it against her ear in one sweeping movement.

‘Harry? Ask Sivertsen to roll up his left trouser leg. We’ve got a picture of a masked cyclist in front of the Fountain at half past five last Monday with a plaster on his knee. And he’s holding a brown polythene bag.’

Bjorn had to take longer strides to keep up with his diminutive female colleague as she made her way down the corridor. He heard a voice crackling on the phone.

Beate swung into her office.

‘No plaster and no wound? No, I know that doesn’t prove anything, but for your information Andre Clausen has more or less identified the cyclist in the picture as the same person he saw at Halle, Thune and Wetterlid.’

She sat down behind her desk.

‘What?’

Bjorn Holm saw three deep sergeant’s chevrons appear on her forehead.

‘Right.’

She put down the phone and stared at it as if she didn’t know whether to believe what she had just heard.

‘Harry thinks he knows who the Courier Killer is,’ she said.

Bjorn didn’t answer.

‘Check to see if the lab is free,’ she said. ‘He’s given us a new job.’

‘What kind of job?’ Bjorn asked.

‘A real shit job.’

Oystein Eikeland was sitting in a taxi in the parking area below St Hanshaugen with his eyes half closed, peering down the street at a girl with long legs, imbibing caffeine on a seat on the pavement outside Java. The hum of the air conditioning was drowned out by the sounds of music the loudspeakers were emitting.

Malicious rumour had it that the song was a Gram Parsons number and that Keith and the Stones had nicked it for the Sticky Fingers album while they were down in France. The ’60s were over and they were trying to drug themselves into creativity: ‘Wild Horses’.

One of the back doors opened. Oystein was startled. Whoever it was must have come from behind, from the park. In the mirror he saw a tanned face with a powerful jaw and reflector sunglasses.

‘Lake Maridal, driver.’ The voice was soft, but the command intonation was unmistakable. ‘If it isn’t too much trouble…’

‘Not at all,’ Oystein mumbled as he turned down the music and took a last deep drag of his cigarette before he tossed it out of the open window.

‘Whereabouts by Lake Maridal?’

‘Just drive. I’ll tell you.’

They drove down Ullevalsveien.

‘Rain is forecast,’ Oystein said.

‘I’ll tell you,’ the voice repeated.

No tip then, Oystein thought.

After a ten-minute drive they had left the residential quarter behind them and suddenly it was all fields, farms and Lake Maridal. It was such a wonderful transition that an American passenger had once asked Oystein if they were in a theme park.

‘You can take the turning up there to the left,’ the voice said.

‘Up into the woods?’ Oystein asked.

‘Right. Does that make you nervous?’