Jo Nesbo - The Redeemer

'It's just for one night,' the man said.

'I'm working today.'

'I can wait.'

Bjorgen eyed the man. It's insane, he thought, while his brain slowly and inexorably connected his love of risk with a potential solution to a problem. He swallowed and shifted weight from one foot to the other.

Harry jogged from the airport express in Oslo Central Station across Gronland to Police HQ, took the lift up to the Robberies Unit and loped down the corridors to the House of Pain, the video room.

It was dark, warm and stuffy in the cramped windowless room. He heard quick fingers scurrying across the computer keyboard.

'What can you see?' he asked the silhouette outlined against the flickering pictures on the wall screen.

'Something very interesting,' Beate Lonn said without turning, but Harry knew her eyes were red-rimmed. He had seen Beate working before. Seen her staring at the screen for hours while she wound forward, stopped, focused, magnified, saved. Without knowing what she was looking for. Or what she could see. This was her territory.

'And maybe an explanation,' she added.

'I'm all ears.' Harry groped his way forward in the dark, hit his leg and sat down cursing.

'Ready?'

'Shoot.'

'OK. Meet Christo Stankic.'

On the screen a man stepped forward to an ATM.

'Are you sure?' Harry asked.

'Don't you recognise him?'

'I recognise the blue jacket, but…' Harry said, hearing the confusion in his own voice.

'Wait,' Beate said.

The man put a card in the machine and stood waiting. Then he turned his face to the camera and grimaced. A pretend smile, the kind that meant the opposite.

'He's found out he can't withdraw any money,' Beate said.

The man on camera kept pressing buttons and in the end he smacked the keypad with his hand.

'And now he's found out he won't get his card back,' Harry said.

The man stood staring at the display on the machine for a long time.

Then he pulled back his sleeve, checked his wristwatch, turned and was gone.

'What make was the watch?' Harry asked.

'The glass was reflecting,' Beate said. 'But I magnified the negative. It says Seiko SQ50 on the dial.'

'Clever girl. But I didn't see an explanation.'

'This is the explanation.'

Beate typed and two pictures of the man they had just seen appeared on the screen. One while he was taking out his card; the other while he was looking at his watch.

'I've chosen these two pictures because his face is in roughly the same position and this way it's easy to see. They've been taken with an interval of a little over a hundred seconds. Can you see that?'

'No,' Harry said truthfully. 'I can tell I'm no good at this. I can't even see if it's the same person in the two pictures. Or if he's the man I saw in Toyen Park.'

'Good. Then you've seen it.'

'Seen what?'

'Here's the picture of him off the credit card,' Beate said and clicked. A picture of a man with short hair and a tie appeared.

'And here are the ones Dagbladet took of him in Egertorget.'

Two further pictures.

'Can you tell if this is the same person?' Beate asked.

'Well, no.'

'Nor can I.'

'You can't? If you can't it means it's not the same person.'

'No,' Beate said. 'It means here we have a case of what is known as hyperelasticity. Called visage du pantomime by professionals.'

'What on earth are you talking about?'

'A person who can change their appearance without any need for make-up, disguise or plastic surgery.'

Harry was waiting for all the investigative team to sit down in the red zone's meeting room before he spoke. 'We know now that we're after one man and only one man. For the time being let's call him Christo Stankic. Beate?'

Beate switched on the projector and an image of a face with closed eyes and a mask of something like red spaghetti appeared on the screen.

'What you see here is an illustration of our facial musculature,' she began. 'Muscles we use to form expressions and thereby change our appearance. The most important are located in the forehead, around the eyes and around the mouth. For example, this is the musculus frontalis, which, along with the musculus corrugator supercilii, is used to raise and furrow the eyebrows. The orbicularis oculi is used to close the eyelids or create folds in the part of the face around the eyes. And so on.'

Beate pressed the remote control. The image was replaced by one of a clown with large inflated cheeks.

'We have hundreds of muscles like these in our faces and even those whose job it is to pull faces use just a tiny percentage of the options available. Actors and entertainers train facial muscles to achieve maximum movement which we others lose as a rule at a young age. However, even actors and mime artists tend to use the face for imitative movements to express certain emotions. And, important as they are, they are quite universal and few in number. Anger, happiness, being in love, surprise, a chuckle, a roar of laughter and so on. Nature, though, has given us this mask of muscles to make several million, indeed, an almost unlimited number of facial expressions. Concert pianists have trained the link between brain and finger musculature to such an extent that they can perform ten different simultaneous operations, independently of each other. And we don't even have many muscles in our fingers. So what is the face not capable of?'

Beate moved on to the clip of Christo Stankic outside the ATM.

'Well, we are capable of this for example.'

The film advanced in slow motion.

'The changes are almost imperceptible. Tiny muscles are being tensed and slackened. The result of the small muscle movements is a changed expression. Does the face change that much? No, but the part of the brain that recognises faces – the fusiform gyrus – is very, very sensitive to even minor changes, since its function is to distinguish between thousands of physiologically similar faces. Via the facial muscles' gradual adjustments we end up with what seems to be a different person. Viz., this.'

The recording froze as it reached the last frame.

'Hello! This is Earth calling Mars.'

Harry recognised the voice of Magnus Skarre. Someone laughed, and Beate blushed.

'Sorry,' Skarre said, looking round him with a self-satisfied chuckle. 'That's still the Stankic dago. Science fiction is entertaining but guys who tense a bit here and slacken a bit there and become unrecognisable, that's a trifle far-fetched, if you ask me.'

Harry was on the point of breaking in, but changed his mind. Instead he observed Beate with interest. Two years ago a comment like that would have crushed her on the spot and he would have had to sweep up the pieces.

'As far as I know, no one was asking you,' Beate said, her cheeks still bright red. But since you feel that way let me give you an example I am sure you will understand.'

'Whoa,' exclaimed Skarre, holding his hands up in defence. 'That wasn't meant personally, Lonn.'

'When people die something called rigor mortis sets in.' Beate continued undeterred, but Harry could see her nostrils were flared. 'The muscles in the body, and in the face too, stiffen. It's the same as tensing muscles. And what is the typical reaction when the next of kin has to identify the corpse?'

In the ensuing silence all that could be heard was the hum of the projector fan. Harry was already smiling.

'They don't recognise them,' said a loud, clear voice. Harry had not heard Gunnar Hagen enter the room. 'Not an unusual problem in war when soldiers have to be identified. Of course, they're in uniform, but sometimes even comrades in their own unit have to check the dog tags to be sure.'

'Thank you,' Beate said. 'Did that help the grey matter, Skarre?'

Skarre shrugged, and Harry heard someone laugh out loud. Beate switched off the projector.