‘And if she won’t?’
‘I’ll explain to her the consequences of making a false accusation. And an official expulsion from PHS. She’s not stupid, you know.’
‘I know,’ Harry said, getting up with a sigh. ‘I know.’
Outside, the traffic had started again.
Harry and Arnold Folkestad walked up Karl Johans gate.
‘Thank you,’ Harry said. ‘But I’m still wondering how you grasped everything so quickly.’
‘I have some experience of OCD,’ Arnold smiled.
‘Sorry?’
‘Obsessive compulsive disorder. When a person with that predisposition has made a decision, she stops at nothing. Action is in itself more important than the consequences.’
‘I know what OCD is. I have a psychologist pal who has accused me of being halfway there myself. What I meant was, how did you twig so fast that we needed a witness and that we had to get ourselves to Krimteknisk?’
Arnold Folkestad chuckled. ‘I don’t know if I can tell you that, Harry.’
‘Why not?’
‘What I can tell you is that I was involved in a case where two policemen were about to be reported by someone they’d beaten senseless. But by doing something similar to what we’ve just done they got one over on him. One of them burnt the evidence that counted against them. And what was left wasn’t enough, so the man’s lawyer advised him to drop the charge because they wouldn’t get anywhere. I reckoned the same would happen here.’
‘Now you’re making it sound as if I really did rape her, Arnold.’
‘Sorry.’ Arnold laughed. ‘I had been half expecting that something like this would happen. The girl’s a ticking time bomb. Our psychological tests should have disqualified her before she was offered a place on the course.’
They walked across Egertorget. Images flickered through Harry’s brain. A smile from a laughing girlfriend one May when he was young. The body of a Salvation Army soldier in front of the Christmas kettle. A town full of memories.
‘So who were the two policemen?’
‘One pretty high up.’
‘Is that why you won’t tell me? And you were part of it? Guilty conscience?’
Arnold Folkestad shrugged. ‘Anyone who doesn’t dare to stand up for justice should have a guilty conscience.’
‘Mm. A policeman with a history of violence and a predilection for burning evidence. There aren’t many of them. We wouldn’t by any chance be talking about an officer by the name of Truls Berntsen, would we?’
Arnold Folkestad said nothing, but the wince that recoiled through his short, round body was more than enough to tell Harry what he wanted to know.
‘Mikael Bellman’s shadow. That’s what you mean by pretty high up, isn’t it?’ Harry spat on the tarmac.
‘Shall we talk about something else, Harry?’
‘Yes, let’s do that. Lunch at Schrøder’s?’
‘Schrøder’s? Do they really have. . er, lunch?’
‘They have burgers on bread. And room.’
‘That looks familiar, Rita,’ Harry said to the waitress who had just placed two burnt burgers covered with pale fried onions in front of them.
‘Nothing changes here, you know.’ She smiled and left them.
‘Truls Berntsen, yes,’ Harry said, looking over his shoulder. He and Arnold were almost alone in the single, square room which despite years of anti-smoking legislation still felt smoky. ‘I think he’s been operating as a burner inside the police for many years.’
‘Oh?’ Folkestad studied the animal cadaver in front of them with scepticism. ‘And what about Bellman?’
‘He was responsible for narcotics during that time. I know he had some deal with one Rudolf Asayev, who was selling a heroin-like substance called violin,’ Harry said. ‘Bellman granted Asayev the monopoly in Oslo in return for an assurance that visible signs of drug trafficking, junkies in the streets and of course ODs went down. That made Bellman look good.’
‘So good that he got his hands on the Police Chief job?’
Harry chewed tentatively on the first bite of burger and shrugged his shoulders to suggest a ‘maybe’.
‘And why haven’t you passed on what you know?’ Arnold Folkestad cut carefully into what he hoped was meat. Gave up and looked at Harry, who returned a blank stare as he chewed and chewed. ‘A blow for justice?’
Harry swallowed. Wiped his mouth with a paper serviette. ‘I had no proof. Besides, I was no longer a policeman. It wasn’t my business. It isn’t my business now either, Arnold.’
‘No, I suppose not.’ Folkestad speared a chunk on his fork and raised it for inspection. ‘But if this isn’t your business, and you’re no longer a policeman, why has the pathologist sent you a post-mortem report on this Rudolf Asayev?’
‘Mm. So you saw it?’
‘Only because I usually collect your post as well when I’m by the pigeonholes. And because I’m a nosy parker, of course.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘I haven’t tried it yet.’
‘Go for it. It won’t bite.’
‘Same to you, Harry.’
Harry smiled. ‘They searched behind the eyeball. And found what we’d been searching for. A little pinprick in the large blood vessel. Someone could have pushed Asayev’s eyeball to the side while he was in the coma and injected air bubbles into the corner of the eye. The result would have been instant blindness followed by a blood clot in the brain which couldn’t be traced.’
‘Now I really feel like eating this,’ Folkestad grimaced and put down his fork. ‘Are you saying you’ve proved that Asayev was murdered?’
‘Nope. The cause of death is still impossible to determine. But the mark proves what might have happened. The conundrum is of course how anyone got into the hospital room. The duty officer insisted he didn’t see anyone pass during the period when the injection must have been made. Neither a doctor nor anyone else.’
‘The mystery of the locked room.’
‘Or something simpler. Like the officer leaving his post or falling asleep and, quite understandably, not admitting it. Or he was in on the murder, directly or indirectly.’
‘If he went AWOL or fell asleep the murder would have depended on serendipity, and surely we don’t believe in that?’
‘No, Arnold, we don’t. But he could have been lured away from his post. Or doped.’
‘Or bribed. You’ll have to get the officer in for questioning!’
Harry shook his head.
‘Why on earth not?’
‘First of all, I’m not a policeman any more. Secondly, the officer’s dead. He was the one killed in the car outside Drammen.’ Harry nodded as if to himself, raised his coffee cup and took a sip.
‘Damn!’ Arnold had leaned forward. ‘And thirdly?’
Harry signalled to Rita for the bill. ‘Did I say there was a thirdly?’
‘You said “secondly”, not “and secondly”. As though you were in the middle of reeling off a list.’
‘Right. I’ll have to sharpen up my Norwegian.’
Arnold tilted his head. And Harry saw the question in his colleague’s eyes. If this is a case you’re not going to follow up, why are you telling me about it?
‘Come on, eat up,’ Harry said. ‘I’ve got a lecture.’
The sun slipped across a pale sky, made a gentle landing on the horizon and coloured the clouds orange.
Truls Berntsen sat in his car half listening to the police radio while waiting for darkness to fall. Waiting for the lights in the house above him to be switched on. Waiting to see her. A fleeting glimpse would be enough.
Something was brewing. He could hear it in the style of communication, something was happening alongside the usual, subdued, routine normality. Short, intense reports came sporadically, as though they had been told not to use the radio more than necessary. And it wasn’t what was said, more what wasn’t said. The way it wasn’t said. The staccato sentences on the surface about surveillance and transport, but without addresses, times or individual names being mentioned. People used to say the police frequency was the fourth most popular local radio in Oslo, but that was before it had been encrypted. Nevertheless, they were talking this evening as though they were terrified of revealing something.