He filled his lungs. And screamed.
28
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
‘SEX DOLLS ARE nothing new,’ Smith said, looking down at the plastic and silicon woman on the bed. ‘When the Dutch ruled the seven seas, the sailors used to take a sort of doll-like vagina with them, sewn out of leather. It was so common that the Chinese called it a “Dutch wife”.’
‘Really?’ Katrine asked, watching the white-clad angels of the forensics team as they examined the bedroom. ‘So they spoke English?’
Smith laughed. ‘Got me. The articles in academic journals are in English. In Japan there are brothels containing nothing but sex dolls. The most expensive ones are heated, so they stay at body temperature, they have skeletons which mean you can bend their arms and legs into natural and unnatural positions, and they have automatic lubrication of—’
‘Thank you, I think that’s enough,’ Katrine said.
‘Of course, sorry.’
‘Did Bjørn tell you why he was staying in the boiler room?’
Smith shook his head.
‘He and Lien had things to do,’ Wyller said.
‘Berna Lien? Things to do?’
‘He just said that as long as this wasn’t assumed to be a murder scene, he’d leave it to the others.’
‘Things to do,’ Katrine muttered as she walked out of the bedroom with the other two hot on her heels. Out of the flat, out to the car park in front of the apartment blocks. They stopped behind the blue Honda where two forensics experts were examining the boot. They had found the keys in the flat, and it had been confirmed that the car was registered to Alexander Dreyer. The sky above them was steel grey, and on the far side of Torshovdalen’s billowing grass-covered slopes Katrine could see the wind grabbing the treetops. The latest forecast said that Emilia was only a matter of hours away.
‘Smart of him not to take the car,’ Wyller said.
‘Yep,’ Katrine said.
‘What do you mean?’ Smith asked.
‘The toll stations, car parks and traffic cameras,’ Wyller said. ‘You can run number-plate recognition software on video recordings, it only takes seconds.’
‘Brave new world,’ Katrine said.
‘O brave new world, that has such people in it,’ Smith said.
Katrine turned to the psychologist. ‘Can you imagine where someone like Valentin might go if he ran?’
‘No.’
‘No, as in “no idea”?’
Smith pushed his glasses further up his nose. ‘No, as in “I can’t imagine him running”.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he’s angry.’
Katrine shivered. ‘You didn’t exactly make him less angry if he heard your podcast with Daa.’
‘No,’ Smith sighed. ‘Maybe I went too far. Again. Fortunately we’ve got decent locks and security cameras after the break-in in the barn. But maybe …’
‘Maybe what?’
‘Maybe we’d feel safer if I had a weapon, a pistol or something.’
‘Regulations don’t permit us to give you a police weapon without a licence and weapons training.’
‘Emergency armament,’ Wyller said.
Katrine looked at him. Perhaps the criteria for emergency armament had been met, perhaps not. But she could see the headlines after Smith had been shot and it emerged that he had requested emergency armament and had been turned down. ‘Can you help Hallstein get issued with a pistol?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK. I’ve told Skarre to check trains, boats, flights, hotels and boarding houses. We’ll have to hope that Valentin doesn’t have the paperwork to support other identities apart from Alexander Dreyer.’ Katrine looked up at the sky. She had once had a boyfriend who was keen on paragliding, and he had told her that even if there was no wind on the ground, the air just a couple of hundred metres up could break the speed limit on a motorway. Dreyer. Dutch wife. Things to do? Pistol. Angry.
‘And Harry wasn’t at home?’ she said.
Wyller shook his head. ‘I rang the doorbell, walked round the house, looked in all the windows.’
‘Time to talk to Oleg,’ she said. ‘He must have keys.’
‘I’ll get on to it.’
She sighed. ‘If you don’t find Harry there, it might be an idea to get Telenor to try and locate his phone.’
One of the white-clad forensics guys came over to her.
‘There’s blood in the boot,’ he said.
‘Much?’
‘Yes. And this.’ He held up a large transparent plastic evidence bag. Inside was a white blouse. Torn. Bloody. With lace on it, the way customers had described the blouse Marte Ruud had been wearing the night she went missing.
29
WEDNESDAY EVENING
HARRY OPENED HIS eyes and stared into the darkness.
Where was he? What had happened? How long had he been unconscious? His head felt like someone had hit it with an iron bar. His pulse was throbbing against his eardrums in a monotonous rhythm. All he could remember was that he was locked in. And as far as he could work out, he was lying on a floor covered in cold tiles. Cold like the inside of a fridge. He was lying in something wet, sticky. He raised his hand and stared at it. Was that blood?
Then, slowly, it dawned on Harry that it wasn’t his pulse throbbing against his eardrums.
It was a bass guitar.
Kaiser Chiefs? Probably. It was definitely one of those hip English bands that he’d actually forgotten. Not that Kaiser Chiefs were bad, but they weren’t exceptional and had therefore ended up in the grey soup of things he had heard more than a year ago but less than twenty: they just hadn’t stuck. While he could remember every note and lyric from the very worst songs from the 1980s, the period between then and now was a blank. Just like the period between yesterday and now. Nothing. Just that insistent bass. Or his heartbeat. Or someone banging on the door.
Harry opened his eyes again. He smelt his hand, hoping it wasn’t blood, piss or vomit.
The bass started to play out of time with the song.
It was the door.
‘Closed!’ Harry shouted. And regretted it when it felt like his head was going to explode.
The track ended and the Smiths took over. And Harry realised he must have plugged his own phone into the stereo when he got sick of Bad Company. ‘There is a Light That Never Goes Out’. If only it would. But the hammering on the door merely continued. Harry put his hands over his ears. But when the track reached the last part with nothing but strings, he heard a voice shouting his name. And because it could hardly be someone who had found out that the new owner of the Jealousy Bar was called Harry, and because he recognised the voice, he grabbed hold of the edge of the counter and heaved himself up. First to his knees. Then a forward-leaning posture, which in spite of everything had to qualify as standing, seeing as the soles of his shoes were planted on the sticky floor. He saw the two empty Jim Beam bottles lying on their sides with their mouths over the edge of the counter, and realised that he had lain there marinating in his own bourbon whiskey.
He saw her face outside the window. It looked like she was alone.
He ran one stiff index finger across his throat to indicate that the bar was closed, but she gave him a long stiff finger in return and started banging on the window instead.
And because the noise sounded like a hammer on the already battered parts of his brain, Harry decided that he may as well open the door. He let go of the counter, took a step. And fell over. Both his feet had fallen asleep – how was that possible? He got up again, and with the help of the tables and chairs he staggered to the door.
‘Bloody hell,’ Katrine groaned when he opened the door. ‘You’re drunk!’