‘Police porn,’ Harry said, putting the yellow folder on the counter. ‘Printouts and transcripts.’
‘The vampirist case? Hasn’t that been solved?’
‘Yes, there are just a few loose ends, formalities. Can’t you hear that the coffee’s boiling?’
‘Can’t you hear that Taylor Swift isn’t singing?’
Harry opened his mouth to say something, but instead heard himself laughing. He loved this guy. Loved this bar. He poured the spoiled coffee into two cups and tapped along on the folder to the beat of ‘Welcome to Some Pork’. As he glanced at the pages he thought that Rakel was bound to say yes, if he just sat quiet as a mouse and gave her some time.
His eyes stopped.
It was as if the ice creaked beneath him.
His heart began to beat faster. We all get fooled in the end, Harry.
‘What is it?’ Øystein asked.
‘What’s what?’
‘You look like you’ve … well …’
‘Seen a ghost?’ Harry asked, and reread it to make sure.
‘No,’ Øystein said.
‘No?’
‘No, you look more like you’ve … woken up.’
Harry looked up from the files and looked at Øystein. And felt it. His anxiety. It was gone.
‘It’s sixty,’ Harry warned. ‘And icy.’
Oleg eased off the accelerator slightly. ‘Why don’t you drive, seeing as you’ve got a car and a driving licence?’
‘Because you and Rakel are better drivers,’ Harry said, squinting against the sharp sunlight reflecting off the low snow-and tree-covered hillsides. A sign announced that they were four kilometres from Åneby.
‘Mum could have driven, then?’
‘I thought it might be useful for you to see a sheriff’s office. You could end up being sent somewhere like this one day, you know.’
Oleg braked behind a tractor that was throwing up snow as its chains sang against the tarmac. ‘I’m heading for Crime Squad, not the countryside.’
‘Oslo is almost the countryside, it’s only half an hour away.’
‘I’ve applied to the FBI course in Chicago.’
Harry smiled. ‘If you’re that ambitious, a couple of years in a sheriff’s office shouldn’t scare you. Take a left here.’
‘Jimmy,’ said the burly, cheery-looking man standing in front of the door of Nittedal sheriff’s office, which was located next door to social services and the jobcentre, in the sort of plain modern building that provided public services all over Norway. His fresh suntan made Harry assume he’d spent his winter break in the Canary Islands, even if his thoughts of ‘Lanzagrotty’ were based on a prejudiced assumption about where people from Nittedal with first names ending in ‘y’ went on holiday.
Harry shook his hand. ‘Thanks for taking the time to talk to us on a Saturday, Jimmy. This is Oleg, he’s a student at Police College.’
‘Looks like a future sheriff,’ Jimmy said, looking the tall young man up and down. ‘I consider it an honour that Harry Hole himself would want to visit us. So I’m afraid you’re the ones wasting your time here, not me.’
‘Oh?’
‘You said on the phone that you couldn’t get any answer from Lenny Hell, so I did a quick check while you were on your way. Turns out he went off to Thailand just after that interview with you.’
‘Turns out?’
‘Yes, before he left he told his neighbours and regular clients that he might be gone a while. So presumably he’s got a Thai number now, even if none of the people I spoke to know what it is. They don’t know where he’s staying out there either.’
‘A loner, maybe?’
‘You can safely say that.’
‘Family?’
‘Single. Only child. He never left home, and since his parents died he’s lived up in the Pig House on his own.’
‘Pig House?’
‘That’s just what we call it here in town. The Hell family worked with pigs for generations, did quite well out of it, and a hundred years ago they built a rather striking three-storey house up there. The Pig House.’ The sheriff chuckled. ‘Doesn’t do to get ideas above your station, eh?’
‘Hm. So what do you think Lenny Hell is doing in Thailand for so long?’
‘Well, what do people like Lenny do in Thailand?’
‘I don’t know Lenny,’ Harry said.
‘Nice guy,’ the sheriff said. ‘Smart too, an IT engineer. Works from home, freelance, we sometimes call him in when we get computer trouble. No drugs, nothing stupid. No money problems either, as far as I know. But he’s never quite got to grips with the whole women thing.’
‘What does that mean?’
Jimmy looked at the smoke from their breath as it hung in the air. ‘Bit cold out here, guys. Shall we go inside and get some coffee?’
‘I reckon Lenny’s on the lookout for a Thai bride,’ Jimmy said as he poured filter coffee into two white social services mugs and his own Lillestrøm Sportsklubb mug. ‘He couldn’t cope with the competition here at home.’
‘No?’
‘No. Like I said, Lenny’s something of a lone wolf, he keeps to himself and doesn’t say much, and he’s not much of a babe magnet to start with. And he has trouble controlling his jealousy. As far as I know, he’s never hurt a fly – or a woman – but there was one incident when a woman called us, saying that Lenny had become a bit intense after their first date.’
‘Stalking?’
‘That’s what it’s called these days, yes. Lenny had evidently sent her a load of text messages and flowers, even though she’d said she wasn’t interested in taking it any further. He’d be standing there waiting when she finished work. She made it very clear that she never wanted to see him again, and so she didn’t. But instead she told us she started to feel that things in her flat had been moved while she was at work. So she called us.’
‘She thought he’d been in her flat?’
‘I talked to Lenny, but he denied it. And we never heard any more about it after that.’
‘Does Lenny Hell have a 3D printer?’
‘A what?’
‘A machine that can be used to copy keys.’
‘No idea, but like I said, he’s an IT engineer.’
‘How jealous is he?’ Oleg asked, and the other two turned towards him.
‘On a scale of one to ten?’ Jimmy asked. Harry couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic.
‘I’m just wondering if it could be morbid jealousy?’ Oleg asked, glancing uncertainly at Harry.
‘What’s the lad talking about, Hole?’ Jimmy took an audible slurp from his canary-yellow mug. ‘Is he asking if Lenny’s killed anyone?’
‘OK. Like I said on the phone, we’re just tidying up a few loose ends from the vampirist case, and Lenny did talk to two of the victims.’
‘And this Valentin guy killed them,’ Jimmy said. ‘Or is there some doubt about that now?’
‘No doubt,’ Harry said. ‘As I said, I just wanted to talk to Lenny Hell about those conversations. See if I could find out anything we didn’t already know. I saw on the map that his address is only a few kilometres from here, so I was thinking we could head up there and knock on the door. Get it out of the way.’
The sheriff stroked the emblem on his mug with a large hand. ‘It said in the paper that you’re a lecturer these days, not a detective.’
‘I suppose I’m like Lenny, a freelancer.’
Jimmy folded his arms, and his left sleeve slid up to reveal a faded tattoo of a naked woman. ‘OK, Hole. As you’ll appreciate, not much happens in Nittedal sheriff’s district, and thank God for that. So when you called, I didn’t just make a few phone calls, I also took a drive up to Lenny’s house. Or rather, I drove as far as I could. The Pig House is at the end of a forest road, and once you’ve passed the last neighbour there’s still a kilometre and a half to go. And the snow is half a metre deep, just as high as it is at the side of the road, with no sign of tracks made by either wheels or shoes. Only elk and foxes. And maybe the odd wolf. You get my meaning? There hasn’t been anyone there for weeks, Hole. If you want to get hold of Lenny, you’ll have to buy a plane ticket to Thailand. Pattaya’s popular with men who are after Thai ladies, or so I’ve heard.’