Jo Nesbo - Nemesis

'Mm. He must have been a real wild child.'

'Wild child?' She shaded her eyes. 'I wouldn't exactly say that. He was a polite, well-brought-up boy. That was what was so shocking.'

'And everybody round here knew he'd done it?'

'Everybody. I saw him from this window. A red jacket heading off on his bike. I should have known there was something wrong when he came back. The lad's face was completely drained of colour.' She shuddered in the cold gust of wind. Then she pointed across the road.

Trond was walking towards them with his arms hanging down by his sides. He slowed down more and more until, in the end, he was hardly moving.

'It's Lev, isn't it,' he said on finally reaching them.

'Yes,' Harry said.

'Is he dead?'

From the corner of his eye he saw the gaping face in the window. 'Yes, he's dead.'

'Good,' said Trond. Then he bent over and hid his face in his hands.

Bjarne Mшller stood staring through the window with a concerned expression on his face when Harry peeked in through the half-open door. Harry tapped.

Mшller turned and brightened up. 'Oh, hi.'

'Here's the report, boss.' Harry tossed a green Manila wallet on his desk.

Mшller fell into his chair, managed after some exertion to heap his excessively long legs under the desk and put on his glasses.

'Aha,' he mumbled as he opened the wallet inscribed LIST OF DOCUMENTS. Inside there was a solitary piece of A4 paper.

'Didn't think you'd want to know all the ins and outs,' Harry said.

'If you say so, I'm sure you're right,' Mшller said, running his eyes over the generously spaced lines.

Harry looked over his boss's shoulder and out of the window. There was nothing to see, just thick damp mist which lay like a used nappy over the town. Mшller put down the piece of paper.

'So you just went there, someone told you where the man lived and you found the Expeditor hanging from a rope?'

'In broad outline, yes.'

Mшller shrugged his shoulders. 'Fine by me so long as we have watertight evidence that this is the man we've been looking for.'

'Weber checked the fingerprints this morning.'

'And?'

Harry sat down in the chair. 'They tally with those we found on the Coke bottle the robber was holding before he went into action.'

'Can we be sure it's the same bottle…?'

'Relax, boss. We've got the bottle and the man on the video. You just read in the report that we have a handwritten suicide note in which Lev Grette confesses, didn't you? We went to Disengrenda this morning and informed Trond Grette. We asked if we could borrow some of Lev's old schoolbooks from the loft and Beate took them to the Kripos handwriting expert. He says there's no doubt the suicide note was written by the same person.'

'Yes, yes, yes, I just wanted to be absolutely sure before we went public with this, Harry. It's front-page news, you know.'

'You should try to be a little happier, boss.' Harry got to his feet. 'We've just solved our biggest case for a good while. The place should be festooned with streamers and balloons.'

'I'm sure you're right,' Mшller sighed. He paused before asking, 'Why don't you look happier then?'

'I won't be happy until we solve the other case, you know…' Harry went towards the door. 'Halvorsen and I are clearing our desks today and we'll make a start on the Ellen Gjelten case tomorrow.'

He stopped in the doorway when Mшller cleared his throat. 'Yes, boss?'

'I was wondering how you found out Lev Grette was the Expeditor.'

'Well, the official version is that Beate recognised him on the video. Would you like to hear the unofficial one?'

Mшller was massaging a stiff knee. The concerned expression was back. 'Probably not.'

'Mm,' said Harry, standing in the doorway to the House of Pain.

'Mm,' said Beate, twisting round on her chair and glancing at the pictures rolling across the screen.

'Suppose I ought to thank you for great teamwork.'

'Same to you.'

Harry stood fingering his bunch of keys. 'Anyway,' he said. 'I don't think Ivarsson will be pissed off for very long. After all, he bathed in some of the glory as it was his idea to make us a team.'

Beate smiled faintly. 'For as long as it lasted.'

'Don't forget what I said about you-know-who.'

'No.' Her eyes flashed.

Harry pushed his shoulders forward. 'He's a bastard. It would be unconscionable of me not to tell you.'

'Lovely to know you, Harry.'

Harry let the door close behind him.

Harry unlocked the door to his flat, put down his bag and the plastic Playstation carrier in the middle of the hall floor and went to bed. Three dreamless hours later he was awoken by the telephone ringing. He turned over and saw it was 19.03 on his alarm clock; he swung his legs out of bed, shuffled into the hallway, picked up the telephone and said: 'Hi, Шystein,' before the other person could even introduce himself.

'Hello, you in Oslo, I'm at the airport in Cairo,' Шystein said. 'We said we'd speak now, didn't we?'

'You're punctuality personified,' Harry said with a yawn. 'And you're drunk.'

'Not drunk, no,' Шystein slurred indignantly. 'Just had a couple of Stellas. Or was it three? Have to watch your fluids in the desert, y'know. I'm clear-headed and sober, Harry.'

'That's good to hear. I hope you have more good news.'

'As the doctor says, there's good news and bad news. I'll tell you the good news first…'

'Right.'

A long pause followed, during which all Harry could hear was a crackling noise over what sounded like heavy breathing.

'Шystein?'

'Yes?'

'I'm standing here, getting as excited as a child at Christmas.'

'Hey?'

'The good news?'

'Oh, yes. Um, well, I've got the client's number, Harry. No problemo, as they say here. It was a Norwegian mobile phone number.'

'Mobile? Is that possible?'

'You can send wireless e-mails all over the world. You just connect your computer to a mobile which in turn connects to the server. That's pretty damn old news, Harry.'

'OK, but has this client a name?'

'Er…of course. But the guys in El Tor don't have it. They just bill the Norwegian telephone operator, Telenor in this case, who in turn invoices the end client. So I rang Information in Norway and got the name.'

'Yes?' Harry was fully awake now.

'Now we've come to the not quite such good news.'

'OK?'

'Have you checked your telephone bill recently, Harry?'

It took a few seconds before it clicked. 'My mobile phone. Is the bastard using my mobile phone?'

'You no longer have it, I suppose?'

'No, I lost it that evening…with Anna. Fuck!'

'And it never occurred to you it might be a good idea to cancel your contract?'

'Occurred to me?' Harry groaned. 'Nothing sensible has occurred to me since this shit started, Шystein. Sorry, I'm freaking out here. It's all so simple and obvious. That was why I didn't find my phone at Anna's. And that's why he's laughing.'

'Apologies for ruining your day.'

'Hang on a moment,' Harry said, suddenly in high spirits. 'If we can prove he has my phone, we can also prove he was at Anna's after I left!'

'Yippee!' screeched the receiver. And then a more cautious: 'If it means you're happy, anyway? Hello? Harry?'

'I'm still here. I'm thinking.'

'It's good to think. You keep thinking. I've got a date with Stella. Well, several actually. And if I'm going to make the Oslo flight…'

'All the best, Шystein.'

Harry stood with the receiver in his hand, weighing up whether to hurl it into the mirror or not. When he woke up next day, he hoped he had dreamed the conversation with Шystein. In fact he had. Six or seven versions of it.