Jo Nesbo - Nemesis

Beate screwed up her eyes, squeezed out the last tear. Then she opened her eyes again. Waaler held out a handkerchief, which she took.

'Tom,' she said. 'I have to explain something to you.'

'You don't need to.' Waaler stroked her hand. 'I understand. There's a conflict of loyalties. Imagine what your father would have done. It's called being professional, isn't it.'

Beate observed him. Then she slowly nodded her head. She breathed in. At that moment the telephone rang.

'Are you going to take it?' Waaler said, after three rings.

'It's my mother,' Beate said. 'I'll ring her back in thirty seconds.'

'Thirty seconds?'

'That's the time it'll take me to tell you that if I knew where Harry was, you'd be the last person I'd tell.' She passed him his handkerchief. 'And for you to put your shoes on and get out.'

Up his back and neck, Tom Waaler could feel the fury rising like a geyser. He took a moment to enjoy the feeling before grabbing her with one arm and forcing her under him. She gasped and resisted him, but he knew she could feel his erection and that the lips she was so tightly clenching would soon open.

After six rings Harry hung up and left the telephone box, so the girl behind him could slip in. He turned his back on Kjшlberggata and the wind, lit a cigarette and blew the smoke towards the car park and the caravans. It was funny really. Here he was, a couple of hefty stones' throws away from Forensics in one direction, Police HQ in another and the caravan in the third. Wearing a gypsy's suit. A wanted man. You could kill yourself laughing.

Harry's teeth chattered. He half-turned when a police car swept down the traffic-laden but unpopulated thoroughfare. Harry hadn't been able to sleep. Couldn't bear to be inactive while time was ticking away. He crushed the cigarette end beneath his heel and was about to go when he saw the telephone box was free again. Checked his watch. Almost midnight, strange she wasn't at home. Perhaps she had been asleep and hadn't made it to the phone? He dialled the number again. She answered immediately: 'Beate.'

'It's Harry. Did I wake you?'

'I…yes.'

'Sorry. Shall I call back tomorrow?'

'No, it's convenient now.'

'Are you alone?'

Silence. 'Why do you ask?'

'You sound so…no, forget it. Have you found out anything?'

He heard her gulp as if she was trying to catch her breath.

'Weber checked the fingerprints on the glass. Most of them are yours. The analysis of the sediment in the glass should be finished in a couple of days.'

'Great.'

'As for the laptop in your storeroom, it turns out there was a specialised program running which allows you to set the date and time for when you want an e-mail to be sent. The last change to the e-mails was made the day Anna Bethsen died.'

Harry no longer felt the icy-cold wind.

'So the e-mails you received were ready and waiting when it was planted,' Beate said. 'That explains how your Pakistani neighbour had seen it in your storage space quite a time ago.'

'Do you mean it had been working away all on its own the whole time?'

'Connected to the mains, the laptop and mobile phone would manage just fine.'

'Hell!' Harry slapped his forehead. 'But that must mean the guy who programmed the laptop anticipated the whole course of events. The whole bloody thing was a puppet show, and we were the puppets.'

'Looks like that. Harry?'

'I'm here. Just trying to let it sink in. Well, better forget it for a while, it's too much in one go. How about the name of the company I gave you?'

'The company, yes. What makes you think I've done anything about that?'

'Nothing. Until you just said what you did.'

'I didn't say anything.'

'No, but the way you said it was full of promise.'

'Oh, yes?'

'You found something, didn't you.'

'I found something.'

'Come on!'

'I rang the accountants that the locksmith uses and got a lady to send me the national insurance numbers of the employees working there. Four full-time staff and two part-time. I ran the numbers through the Criminal and Social Security Register. Five of them have an unblemished record. But one…'

'Yes?'

'I had to use the scroll to get everything. Mostly drugs. Has been charged with peddling heroin and morphine, but has only been convicted of possession of a small amount of hash. Has done time for breaking and entering and two aggravated robberies.'

'Violence?'

'He used a gun in one of the robberies. It wasn't fired, but it was loaded.'

'Perfect. He's our man. You're an angel. What's his name?'

'Alf Gunnerud. Thirty years old, single. Thor Olsens gate 9. Seems to live on his own.'

'Repeat the name and address.'

Beate did.

'Mm. Incredible that Gunnerud got a job at a locksmith's with a record like that.'

'Birger Gunnerud is listed as the owner.'

'Right. I see. Sure everything's alright?'

Silence.

'Beate?'

'Everything's OK, Harry. What are you going to do?'

'I was thinking of paying a visit to his flat. See if I can find anything of interest. If I do, I'll ring you from his flat so you can send a car and impound the evidence according to regulations.'

'When are you going?'

'Why?'

Another silence.

'To be sure I'm in when you phone.'

'Eleven tomorrow. I hope he'll be at work then.'

When Harry rang off, he stood gazing at the cloudy night sky arching over the town like a yellow dome. He had heard the music in the background. Barely, but it was enough. Prince's 'Purple Rain'.

He shoved a coin in the slot and dialled 1881.

'I need the number for one Alf Gunnerud…'

The taxi glided like a silent black fish through the night, through the traffic lights, beneath the street lighting and the sign indicating the city centre.

'We can't keep meeting like this,' Шystein said. He looked into the mirror and watched Harry put on the black jumper he had brought him from home.

'Got the crowbar?' Harry asked.

'It's in the boot. What if the john's at home?'

'People at home generally answer the phone.'

'But what if he comes home while you're in his flat?'

'Then do what I said: two short hoots.'

'Alright, alright, but I don't know what the guy looks like.'

'About thirty, I said. See anyone like that going into number 9, you honk your horn.'

Шystein pulled over by a NO PARKING sign in the polluted, traffic-congested twisted bowel of a street which is referred to a dusty book called City Fathers IV in the neighbouring public library as 'the extremely dull, unsightly street bearing the name Thor Olsens gate'. But it suited Harry down to the ground that night. The noise, passing cars and the darkness would camouflage him and the waiting taxi.

Harry slipped the crowbar down the sleeve of his leather jacket and quickly crossed the street. To his relief he saw there were at least twenty bells outside number 9. That would give him a good many alternatives if his bluff didn't work at first. Alf Gunnerud's name was second down on the right. He looked up at the right-hand side of the building. The windows on the fourth floor were unlit. Harry rang the ground-floor bell. A woman's sleepy voice answered.

'Hi, I'm trying to contact Alf,' Harry said. 'But they're playing their music so loud they can't hear the bell. Alf Gunnerud, that is. The locksmith on the fourth. You couldn't open up for me, could you?'

'It's past midnight.'

'I apologise. I'll make sure Alf keeps the music down.'

Harry waited. The buzz came.

He took three steps at a time. On the fourth floor he stood and listened, but could only hear his pounding heart. There were two doors to choose between. A grey piece of cardboard with ANDERSEN written in felt pen had been glued to one door. The other was bare.