Jo Nesbo: Nemesis

'Did we miss anything?' Harry asked, running a finger along the small handwritten labels on the videos.

'Maybe not,' Ivarsson said. 'Unless you're interested in those minute details which solve crime cases.'

Harry successfully resisted the temptation to say he hadn't gone to the lecture because he had been told by others, who had attended earlier talks, that the sole purpose of his grandstanding was to announce to all and sundry that after he had taken over as Head of the Robberies Unit the clear-up rate for bank robberies rose from thirty-five per cent to fifty per cent. Not a word about the fact that his appointment coincided with a doubling of manpower in his unit, a general extension of their investigative powers and the simultaneous departure of their worst investigator-Rune Ivarsson.

'I regard myself as reasonably interested,' Harry said. 'So, tell me how you solved this one.' He took out one of the cassettes and read aloud what was written on the label: '20.11.94, NOR Savings Bank, Manglerud.'

Ivarsson laughed. 'Gladly. We caught them the old-fashioned way. They switched getaway cars at a waste site in Alnabru and set fire to the one they dumped. But it didn't burn out. We found the gloves of one of the robbers and traces of DNA. We matched them with those of known robbers our investigators had highlighted as potential suspects after having seen the video, and one of them fitted the bill. The idiot had fired a shot into a ceiling and got four years. Anything else you were wondering about, Hole?'

'Mm.' Harry fidgeted with the cassette. 'What sort of DNA was it?'

'I told you, DNA that matched.' The corner of Ivarsson's left eye began to twitch.

'Right, but what was it? Dead skin? A nail? Blood?'

'Is that important?' Ivarsson's voice had become sharp and impatient.

Harry told himself he should keep his mouth shut. He should give up these Don Quixote-like offensives. People like Ivarsson would never learn, anyway.

'Maybe not,' Harry heard himself say. 'Unless you're interested in those minute details which solve crime cases.'

Ivarsson looked daggers at Harry. In the specially insulated room the silence felt like physical pressure on everyone's ears. Ivarsson opened his mouth to speak.

'Knuckle hair.'

Both men in the room turned to Beate Lшnn. Harry had almost forgotten she was there. She looked from one to the other and repeated in a near-whisper: 'Knuckle hair. The hair on your fingers…isn't that what it's called…?'

Ivarsson cleared his throat. 'You're right, it was a hair. But I think it was-although we don't need to go into this any deeper-a hair from the back of the hand. Isn't that right, Beate?' Without waiting for an answer he tapped on the glass of his large wristwatch. 'Have to be off. Enjoy the video.'

As the door slammed behind Ivarsson, Beate took the video cassette out of Harry's hand and the next moment the video player sucked it in with a hum.

'Two hairs,' she said. 'In the left-hand glove. From the knuckle. And the rubbish tip was in Karihaugen, not Alnabru. But the bit about four years is right.'

Harry gave her an astonished look. 'Wasn't that a little before your time?'

She shrugged as she pressed PLAY on the remote control. 'It's only a matter of reading reports.'

'Mm,' Harry said and studied her profile. Then he made himself comfortable in the chair. 'Let's see if this one left behind a few knuckle hairs.'

The video player groaned and Beate switched off the light. In the moments that followed, while the blue lead-in picture illuminated them, another film unravelled in Harry's head. It was short, lasting barely a couple of seconds, a scene bathed in the blue strobe light from Waterfront, a long-defunct club in Aker Brygge. He didn't know her name, the woman with the smiling brown eyes who was trying to shout something to him above the music. They were playing cow-punk. Green on Red. Jason and the Scorchers. He poured Jim Beam into his Coke and didn't give a stuff what her name was. The next night, though, he knew. When they were in the bed adorned with a ship's figurehead, a headless horse, had cast off all the moorings and set out on their maiden voyage. Harry felt the warmth in his belly from the evening before when he had heard her voice on the telephone.

Then the other film took over.

The old man had begun his trek across the floor towards the counter, filmed from a different camera every five seconds.

'Thorkildsen at TV2,' Beate Lшnn said.

'No, it's August Schulz,' Harry said.

'I mean the editing,' she said. 'It looks like Thorkildsen's handiwork at TV2. There are a few tenths missing here and there…'

'Missing? How can you see…?'

'Number of things. Follow the background. The red Mazda you can make out in the street outside was in the centre of the picture on two cameras when the picture shifted. An object can't be in two places at the same time.'

'Do you mean someone has bodged the recording?'

'Not at all. Everything on the six cameras inside and the one outside is recorded on the same tape. On the original tape the picture jumps quickly from one camera to another and all you see is a flicker. So the film has to be edited to get longer coherent sequences. Occasionally we call in people from the TV stations when we don't have the capacity. TV editors like Thorkildsen fiddle with the time code to improve the quality of the recording, not as jagged. Professional neurosis, I guess.'

'Professional neurosis,' Harry repeated. It struck him that was a strangely middle-aged thing for a young girl to say. Or perhaps she wasn't as young as he had first thought? Something had happened to her as soon as the lights were off. The silhouetted body language was more relaxed, her voice firmer.

The robber entered the bank and shouted in English. His voice sounded distant and muffled, it seemed to be wrapped in a duvet.

'What do you think about this?' Harry asked.

'Norwegian. He speaks English so that we won't recognise his dialect, accent or any characteristic words we might be able to link to earlier robberies. He's wearing smooth clothes which don't leave fibres we might be able to trace in getaway cars, bolt-holes or his house.'

'Mm. Any more?'

'All the openings in his clothes are taped over so he won't leave any traces of DNA. Like hair or sweat. You can see his trouser legs are taped round his boots, and the sleeves round his gloves. I would guess he has tape round his head and wax on his eyebrows.'

'A pro then?'

She shrugged. 'Eighty per cent of bank raids are planned less than a week in advance and are carried out by people under the influence of alcohol or drugs. This one was thought through and the robber doesn't appear to be on anything.'

'How can you make that out?'

'If we'd had better light and cameras, we'd have been able to magnify the pictures and see his pupils. But we don't, so I go by his body language. Calm, considered movements, can you see that? If he was on anything, it wasn't speed or any kind of amphetamine. Rohypnol, perhaps. That's the popular one.'

'Why's that?'

'Robbing a bank is an extreme experience. You don't need speed, just the opposite. Last year someone went into Den norske Bank in Solli plass with an automatic weapon, peppered the ceiling and walls and ran out again without any money. He told the judge that he'd popped so much amphetamine that he just had to get it out of his system. I prefer criminals who take Rohypnol, if I may put it like that.'

Harry motioned with his head to the screen. 'Look at Stine Grette's shoulder at position number 1; she's pressing the alarm. And the sound on the recording is suddenly much better. Why?'

'The alarm is connected to the recording device, and when it is activated the film begins to run much faster. That gives us better pictures and better sound. Good enough for us to analyse the robber's voice. And, then, speaking English doesn't help him.'