Текст книги "Phantom"

Автор книги: Jo Nesbo

Соавторы: Jo Nesbo,Jo Nesbo
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

‘Apart from the fact that the two junkies were teenage boys,’ Harry said. ‘Nineteen years old. And eighteen.’ His voice had changed timbre.

Hagen shrugged. ‘Old enough to kill, old enough to die. In the new year they would have been called up for military service.’

‘Could you fix up a chat for me?’

‘Who told you, Harry?’

Harry rubbed his chin. ‘Friend in Krimteknisk.’

Hagen smiled. And this time the smile reached his eyes. ‘You’re so damned kind, Harry. To my knowledge, you have three friends in the police force. Among them Bjorn Holm in Krimteknisk. And Beate Lonn in Krimteknisk. So which one was it?’

‘Beate. Will you fix me up with a visit?’

Hagen sat on the edge of his desk and observed Harry. Looked down at the telephone.

‘On one condition, Harry. You promise to keep miles away from this case. It’s all sunshine and roses between us and Kripos now, and I could do without any more trouble with them.’

Harry grimaced. He had sunk so low in the chair now he could study his belt buckle. ‘So you and the Kripos king have become bosom pals?’

‘Mikael Bellman stopped working for Kripos,’ Hagen said. ‘Hence, sunshine and roses.’

‘Got rid of the psychopath? Happy days…’

‘On the contrary.’ Hagen’s laugh was hollow. ‘Bellman is more present than ever. He’s in this building.’

‘Oh shit. Here in Crime Squad?’

‘God forbid. He’s been running Orgkrim for more than a year.’

‘You’ve got new wombos, I can hear.’

‘Organised crime. They merged a load of the old sections. Burglary, trafficking, narc. It’s all Orgkrim now. More than two hundred employees, biggest unit in the Crime Department.’

‘Mm. More than he had in Kripos.’

‘Yet his salary went down. And you know what that means when people take lower paid jobs?’

‘They’re after more power,’ Harry said.

‘He was the one who got the drugs market under control, Harry. Good undercover work. Arrests and raids. There are fewer gangs and there’s no in-fighting now. OD figures are, as I said, on the way down

…’ Hagen pointed a finger at the ceiling. ‘And Bellman’s on the way up. The boy’s going places, Harry.’

‘Me too,’ Harry said, rising to his feet. ‘To Botsen. I’m counting on there being a visitor’s permit in reception by the time I arrive.’

‘If we’ve got a deal?’

‘Course we have,’ Harry said, grabbing his ex-boss’s outstretched hand. He pumped it twice and made for the door. Hong Kong had been a good school for lying. He heard Hagen lift the telephone receiver, but as he reached the threshold he turned nonetheless.

‘Who’s the third?’

‘What?’ Hagen was looking down at the keypad while tapping with a heavy finger.

‘The third friend I have in the force?’

Unit Head Gunnar Hagen put the receiver to his ear, sent Harry a weary look and said with a sigh: ‘Who do you think?’ And: ‘Hello? Hagen here. I’d like a visitor’s permit… Yes?’ Hagen laid a hand over the receiver. ‘No problem. They’re eating now, but get there for around twelve.’

Harry smiled, mouthed a thank-you and closed the door quietly after him.

Tord Schultz stood in the booth, buttoning up his trousers and putting on his jacket. They had stopped short of examining orifices. The customs official – the one who had stopped him – was waiting outside. Standing there like an external examiner after a viva.

‘Thank you for being so cooperative,’ she said, indicating the exit.

Tord guessed they’d had long discussions about whether they would say ‘we’re sorry’ whenever a sniffer dog had identified someone, but no dope was found. The individual stopped, delayed, suspected and shamed would undoubtedly consider an apology appropriate. But should you complain about someone doing their job? Dogs identified innocent people all the time, and a complaint would be a partial admission that there was a flaw in the procedure, a failure in the system. On the other hand, they could see by his stripes that he was a captain. Not a three-striper, not one of the failed fifty-year-olds who had stayed in the right-hand seat as a first officer because they had messed up their career. No, he had four stripes, which showed that he had order, control; he was a man who was a master of the situation and his own life. Showed that he belonged to the airport’s Brahmin caste. A captain was a person who ought to welcome a complaint from a customs official, whether it was appropriate or not.

‘Not at all, it’s good to know someone is on the mark,’ Tord said, looking for his bag. In the worst-case scenario they had searched it; the dog hadn’t detected anything there. And the metal plates around the space where the package was hidden were still impenetrable for existing X-rays.

‘It’ll be here soon,’ she said.

There were a couple of seconds when they silently regarded each other.

Divorced, Tord thought.

At that moment another official appeared.

‘Your bag…’ he said.

Tord looked at him. Saw it in his eyes. Felt a lump grow in his stomach, rise, nudge his oesophagus. How? How?

‘We took out everything and weighed it,’ he said. ‘An empty twenty-six-inch’ Samsonite Aspire GRT weighs 5.8 kilos. Yours weighs 6.3. Would you mind explaining why?’

The official was too professional to smile overtly, but Tord Schultz still saw the triumph shining in his face. The official leaned forward a fraction, lowered his voice. ‘… or shall we?’

Harry went into the street after eating at Olympen. The old, slightly dissipated hostelry he remembered had been renovated into an expensive Oslo West version of an Oslo East place, with large paintings of the town’s old working-class district. It wasn’t that it wasn’t attractive, with the chandeliers and everything. Even the mackerel had been good. It just wasn’t… Olympen.

He lit a cigarette and crossed Bots Park between Police HQ and the prison’s old, grey walls. He passed a man putting a tatty red poster on a tree and banging a staple gun against the bark of the ancient, and protected, linden. He didn’t seem to be aware of the fact that he was committing a serious offence in full view of all the windows at the front of the building which contained the biggest collection of police officers in Norway. Harry paused for a moment. Not to stop the crime, but to see the poster. It advertised a concert with Russian Amcar Club at Sardines. Harry could remember the long-dissolved band and the derelict club. Olympen. Harry Hole. This was clearly the year for the resurrection of the dead. He was about to move on when he heard a tremulous voice behind him.

‘Got’ny violin?’

Harry turned. The man behind him was wearing a new, clean G-Star jacket. He stooped forward as though there were a strong wind at his back, and he had the unmistakable bowed heroin knees. Harry was going to reply when he realised G-Star was addressing the poster man. But he carried on walking without answering. New wombos for units, new terms for dope. Old bands, old clubs.

The facade of Oslo District Prison, Botsen in popular parlance, was built in the mid-1800s and consisted of an entrance squeezed between two larger wings, which always reminded Harry of a detainee between two policemen. He rang the bell, peered into the video camera, heard the low buzz and shoved the door open. Inside stood a uniformed prison officer, who escorted him up the stairs, through a door, past two other officers and into the rectangular, windowless Visitors’ Room. Harry had been there before. This was where the inmates met their nearest and dearest. A half-hearted attempt had been made to create a homely atmosphere. He avoided the sofa, sat down on a chair, well aware of what went on during the few minutes the inmate was allowed to spend with a spouse or girlfriend.

He waited. Noticed he still had the Police HQ sticker on his lapel, pulled it off and put it in his pocket. The dream of the narrow corridor and the avalanche had been worse than usual last night, he had been buried and his mouth had been stuffed with snow. But that was not why his heart was beating now. Was it with expectation? Or terror?

The door opened before he had a chance to reach a conclusion.

‘Twenty minutes,’ the prison officer said, and left, slamming the door behind him.

The boy standing before him was so changed that for a second Harry had been on the point of shouting that this was the wrong person, this was not him. This boy was wearing Diesel jeans and a black hoodie advertising Machine Head, which Harry realised was not a reference to the old Deep Purple record but – having calculated the time difference – a new heavy metal band. Heavy metal was of course a clue, but the proof was the eyes and high cheekbones. To be precise: Rakel’s brown eyes and high cheekbones. It was almost a shock to see the resemblance. Granted he had not inherited his mother’s beauty – his forehead was too prominent for that, it lent the boy a bleak, almost aggressive appearance. Which was reinforced by the sleek fringe Harry had always assumed he had inherited from his father in Moscow. An alcoholic the boy had never really known properly – he was only a few years old when Rakel had brought him back to Oslo. Where later she was to meet Harry.

Rakel.

The great love of his life. As simple as that. And as complicated.

Oleg. Bright, serious Oleg. Oleg, who had been so introverted, who would not open up to anyone, apart from Harry. Harry had never told Rakel, but he knew more about what Oleg thought, felt and wanted than she did. Oleg and he playing Tetris on his Game Boy, both as keen as each other to smash the record. Oleg and he skating at Valle Hovin; the time Oleg wanted to become a long-distance runner and in fact had the talent for it. Oleg, who smiled, patient and indulgent, whenever Harry promised that in the autumn or spring they would go to London to see Tottenham playing at White Hart Lane. Oleg, who sometimes called him Dad when it was late, he was sleepy and had lost concentration. It was years since Harry had seen him, years since Rakel had taken him from Oslo, away from the grisly reminders of the Snowman, away from Harry’s world of violence and murder.

And now he was standing there by the door, he was eighteen years old, half grown up and looking at Harry without an expression, or at least one Harry could interpret.

‘Hi,’ Harry said. Shit, he hadn’t tested his voice; it came out as a hoarse rasp. The boy would think he was on the verge of tears or something. As if to distract himself, or Oleg, Harry pulled out a pack of Camel cigarettes and poked one between his lips.

He peered up and saw the flush that had spread across Oleg’s face. And the anger. The explosive anger that appeared from nowhere, darkening his eyes and making the blood vessels on his neck and forehead bulge and quiver like guitar strings.

‘Relax, I won’t light it,’ Harry said, nodding to the NO SMOKING sign on the wall.

‘It’s Mum, isn’t it?’ The voice was also older. And thick with fury.

‘What is?’

‘She’s the one who sent for you.’

‘No, she didn’t, I-’

‘Course she did.’

‘No, Oleg, in fact she doesn’t even know I’m in the country.’

‘You’re lying! You’re lying as usual!’

Harry gaped at him. ‘As usual?’

‘The way you lie that you’ll always be there for us and all that crap. But it’s too late now. So you can just go back to… Timbuktu!’

‘Oleg! Listen to me-’

‘No! I won’t listen to you. You’ve got no business here! You can’t come and play dad now, do you understand?’ Harry saw the boy swallow hard. Saw the fury ebb, only for a new wave of blackness to engulf him. ‘You’re no one to us any more. You were someone who drifted in, hung around for a few years and then…’ Oleg made an attempt to snap his fingers, but they slipped off each other without a sound. ‘Gone.’

‘That’s not true, Oleg. And you know it.’ Harry heard his own voice, which was firm and sure now, telling him that he was as calm and secure as an aircraft carrier. But the lump in his stomach told him otherwise. He was used to being yelled at during interrogations, it made no difference to him, at best it made him even calmer and more analytical. But with this lad, with Oleg… against this he had no defence.

Oleg gave a bitter laugh. ‘Shall we see if I can do it now?’ He pressed his middle finger against his thumb. ‘Gone… there we are!’

Harry held up his palms. ‘Oleg…’

Oleg shook his head as he knocked on the door behind him, without taking his dark eyes off Harry. ‘Guard! Visit’s over. Lemme out!’

Harry remained in the chair for a few seconds after Oleg had gone.

Then he struggled to his feet and plodded out into a Bots Park bathed in sunshine.

Harry stood looking up at Police HQ. Pondering. Then he walked up to the custody block. But he stopped halfway, leaned back against a tree and pinched his eyes so hard he could feel he was squeezing out water. Bloody light. Bloody jet lag.

5

‘I just want to see them. I won’t take anything,’ Harry said.

The duty officer behind the counter at the custody block eyed Harry and wavered.

‘Come on, Tore, you know me.’

Nilsen cleared his throat. ‘Yeah, but are you working here again, Harry?’

Harry shrugged.

Nilsen tilted his head and lowered his eyelids until his pupils were only half visible. As though he were filtering the optical impression. Filtering out what was unimportant. And what was left evidently fell in Harry’s favour.

Nilsen released a heavy sigh, disappeared and returned with a drawer. As Harry had assumed, the items found on Oleg when he was arrested were held there. Only when it was decided prisoners would be on remand for longer than a couple of days were they moved down to Botsen, but personal effects weren’t always transferred.

Harry studied the contents. Coins. A ring with two keys, a skull and a Slayer badge. A Swiss army knife with one blade and the rest screwdrivers and Allen keys. A throwaway lighter. And one more object.

It shook Harry, even though he already knew. The newspapers had called it ‘a drugs showdown’.

It was a disposable syringe, still in its plastic wrapper.

‘Is that all?’ Harry asked, taking the key ring. He held it under the counter as he scrutinised the keys. Nilsen clearly did not like Harry holding anything out of his sight and leaned over.

‘No wallet?’ Harry asked. ‘No bank card or ID?’

‘Doesn’t seem so.’

‘Could you check the contents list for me?’

Nilsen picked up the folded list at the bottom of the drawer, fiddled around with his glasses and looked at the sheet. ‘There was a mobile phone, but they took it. Probably wanted to see if he had rung the victim.’

‘Mm,’ Harry said. ‘Anything else?’

‘What else should there be?’ Nilsen said, skimming the sheet. And concluded he had checked everything. ‘Nope.’

‘Thanks, that was all. Thanks for your help, Nilsen.’

Nilsen nodded slowly. Still wearing his glasses. ‘Keys.’

‘Yes, right.’ Harry put them back in the drawer. Watched Nilsen making sure there were still two.

Harry left, crossed the car park and went into Akebergveien. Continued down to Toyen and Urtegata. Little Karachi. Small greengrocers, hijabs and old men on plastic chairs outside their cafes. And to the Watchtower, the Salvation Army cafe for the town’s down-and-outs. Harry knew that on days like today it would be quiet, but as soon as winter and the cold came they would be flocking round the tables. Coffee and freshly made sandwiches. A set of clean clothes, the previous year’s fashion, blue trainers from the army surplus store. In the sickroom on the first floor: attend to the latest wounds from the narcotic battlefields or – if the situation was dire – a vitamin B injection. Harry considered for a moment whether to drop in on Martine. Perhaps she was still working there. A poet had once written that after the great love there were minor ones. She had been one of the minor ones. But that was not the reason. Oslo was not big, and the heavy users gathered either here or at the Mission Cafe in Skippergata. It was not improbable that she had known Gusto Hanssen. And Oleg.

However, Harry decided to take things in the right order, and started to walk again. Passed the Akerselva. He looked down from the bridge. The brown water Harry remembered from his childhood was as pure as a mountain stream. It was said you could catch trout in it now. There they were, on the paths either side of the river: the dope dealers. Everything was new. Everything was the same.

He went up Hausmanns gate. Passed Jakobskirke. Followed the house numbers. A sign for the Theatre of Cruelty. A graffiti-covered door with a smiley. A burnt-down house, open, cleared. And there it was. A typical Oslo tenement building, built in the 1800s, pale, sober, four storeys. Harry pushed the front door, which opened. Not locked. It led straight to the stairway. Which smelt of piss and refuse.

Harry noted the coded tagging on the way up the floors. Loose banisters. Doors bearing the scars of smashed locks with newer, stronger and additional ones in place. On the second floor he stopped and knew he had found the crime scene. Orange-and-white tape criss-crossing the door.

He put his hand into his pocket and took out the two keys he had removed from Oleg’s key ring while Nilsen was reading the checklist. Harry wasn’t sure which of his own keys he had used to replace them, but Hong Kong was not, after all, the hardest place to have new ones made.

One key was an Abus, which Harry knew was a padlock since he had once bought one himself. But the other was a Ving. He inserted it in the lock. It went half in, then stopped. He pushed harder. Tried twisting.

‘Shit.’

He took out his mobile phone. Her number was listed in his contacts as B. As there were only eight names stored, one letter was enough.

‘Lonn.’

What Harry liked best about Beate Lonn, apart from the fact that she was one of the two best forensics officers he had worked with, was that she always reduced information to the basics, and that – like Harry – she never weighed a case down with superfluous words.

‘Hi, Beate. I’m in Hausmanns gate.’

‘The crime scene? What are you doing…?’

‘I can’t get in. Have you got the key?’

‘Have I got the key?’

‘You’re in charge of the whole shebang up there, aren’t you?’

‘Course I’ve got the key. But I’ve no intention of giving it to you.’

‘Course not. But there are a couple of things you’ve got to double-check at the crime scene, aren’t there? I remember something about a guru saying that in murder cases a forensics officer can never be thorough enough.’

‘So you remember that, do you.’

‘It was the first thing she said to all her trainees. I suppose I can join you and see how you work.’

‘Harry…’

‘I won’t touch anything.’

Silence. Harry knew he was exploiting her. She was more than a colleague, she was a friend, but most important of all: she was herself a mother.

She sighed. ‘Give me twenty.’

Saying ‘minutes’ for her was superfluous.

Saying thank you for him was superfluous. So Harry rang off.

Officer Truls Berntsen walked slowly through the corridors of Orgkrim. Because it was his experience that the slower his steps the faster time went. And if there was anything he had enough of it was time. Awaiting him in the office was a worn chair and a small desk with a pile of reports that were there mostly for appearances’ sake. A computer he used mostly for surfing, but even that had become boring after there had been a crackdown on which websites they could visit. And since he worked with narc and not sexual offences he could soon find himself having to give an explanation. Officer Berntsen carried the brimful cup of coffee through the door to the desk. Paid attention not to spill it on the brochure for the new Audi Q5. 218 horsepower. SUV, but not a Paki car. Bandit car. Left the Volvo V70 patrol car standing. A car that showed you were someone. Showed her, she of the new house in Hoyenhall, that you were someone. Not a nobody.

Keeping the status quo. That was the focus now. We’ve achieved definite gains, Mikael had said at the general meeting on Monday. Which meant: make sure no one new gets their oar in. ‘We can always wish there were even fewer narcotics on the streets. But having achieved so much in such a short time there is always the danger of a relapse. Remember Hitler and Moscow. We shouldn’t bite off more than we can chew.’

Officer Berntsen knew in rough terms what that meant. Long days with your feet on the desk.

Sometimes he longed to be back at Kripos. Murder was not like narc, it wasn’t politics, it was just solving a case, period. But Mikael Bellman himself had insisted Truls should accompany him from Bryn to Police HQ, said he needed allies down there in enemy territory, someone he could trust, someone who could cover his flank if he was attacked. Said it without saying it: the way Mikael had covered Truls’s flank. As in the recent case of the boy on remand with whom Truls had been a bit heavy-handed and who, so terribly unfortunate, had received an injury to the face. Mikael had given Truls a bollocking, of course, said he hated police violence, didn’t want to see it in his department, said that now, alas, it was his responsibility as boss to report Truls to the police lawyer, then she would assess whether it should go further to the Special Unit. But the boy’s eyesight had returned to almost normal, Mikael had dealt with the boy’s solicitor, the charge of possessing drugs had been dropped, and nothing happened after that.

The same as nothing happened here.

Long days with feet on the desk.

And that was where Truls was about to put them – as he did at least ten times a day – when he looked out onto Bots Park and the old linden tree in the middle of the avenue leading up to the prison.

It had been put up.

The red poster.

He felt his skin tingle, his pulse rise. And his mood.

In a flash he was up, his jacket was on and his coffee abandoned.

Gamlebyen Church was a brisk eight-minute walk from Police HQ. Truls Berntsen walked down Oslo gate to Minne Park, left over Dyvekes Bridge and he was in the heart of Oslo, where the town had originated. The church was unadorned to the point of appearing poor, without any of the trite ornaments on the new Romantic church by Police HQ. But Gamlebyen Church had a more exciting history. At least if half of what his grandmother had told him during his childhood in Manglerud was true. The Berntsen family had moved from a dilapidated city-centre block to the satellite town of Manglerud when it was constructed at the end of the 1950s. But, strangely enough, it was them – the genuine Oslo family with Berntsen workers spanning three generations – who felt like immigrants. For most people in the satellite towns were farmers or people who came to town from far away to create a new life. And when Truls’s father got drunk in the seventies and the eighties and sat in their flat shouting at everyone and everything, Truls fled to his best – and only – friend, Mikael. Or down to his grandmother in Gamlebyen. She had told him that Gamlebyen Church had been built on top of a monastery from the 1200s, in which the monks had locked themselves away from the Black Death to pray, though folk said it was to escape their Christian duty to tend the contagion carriers. When, after eight months without a sign of life, the Chancellor broke down the doors of the monastery, rats were feasting on the monks’ rotting bodies.

His grandmother’s favourite bedtime story was about when a lunatic asylum – known locally as ‘The Madhouse’ – was built on the same site, and some of the inmates complained that hooded men were walking the corridors at night. And that when one of the hoods was ripped off, a pale face was seen, with rat bites and empty eye sockets. But the story Truls liked best was the one about Askild Oregod, Askild Good Ears. He lived and died more than a hundred years ago, at the time Kristiania, as Oslo was known then, became a proper town, and a church had long existed on the site. It was said that his ghost walked the cemetery, adjacent streets, the harbour district and Kvadraturen. But never further because he had only one leg and needed to get back to his grave before light, his grandmother said. Askild Oregod had lost his leg under the wheel of a fire wagon when he was three, but Truls’s grandmother said the fact that they gave him a nickname based on his large ears instead was an example of Oslo East humour. They were hard times, and for a child with one leg the choice of occupation was fairly obvious. So Askild Oregod begged and became a familiar sight hobbling through the burgeoning town, always friendly and always ready for a chat. And in particular with those sitting in pubs during the day. Without a job. Yet sometimes they suddenly had money in their hands. Then the odd coin often came Askild’s way as well. But occasionally Askild needed a bit more, and then he would tell the police which of them had been extra generous of late. And who, well into the fourth glass, and – unsuspecting of the harmless beggar on the periphery – told others that they had been offered the chance to rob the goldsmith in Karl Johans gate, or a timber merchant in Drammen. Rumours began to spread that Askild’s ears were indeed good, and after a gang of robbers in Kampen were arrested, Askild disappeared. He was never seen again, but one winter’s morning, on the steps of Gamlebyen Church, a crutch and two severed ears appeared. Askild had been buried somewhere in the graveyard, but as no priest had pronounced his blessing, his spirit still walked abroad. And after the onset of night, in Kvadraturen or around the church, you could bump into a man, hobbling with his cap pulled well over his head, begging for two ore. And then it was bad luck not to give the beggar a coin.

That was what his grandmother had told him. Nevertheless, Truls Berntsen ignored the lean beggar with the foreign coat and tanned skin sitting by the cemetery gate, strode down the gravel between the gravestones as he counted, turned left when he got to seven, to the right when he got to three and stopped by the fourth gravestone.

The name carved into the gravestone meant nothing to him. A. C. Rud. He had died as Norway gained its independence in 1905, only twenty-nine years old, but apart from the name and the dates there was no text, no imperative to rest in peace, nor any other winged words. Perhaps because the coarse gravestone was so small. But the blank, rough surface of the stone meant it was perfect for chalking messages, which must have been why they chose it.

LTZHUSCRDTO RNBU

Truls deciphered the text, using the simple code they had developed so that casual passers-by wouldn’t understand. He began at the end, and read the letters in pairs, moving backwards along the line until he reached the final three letters.

BURN TORD SCHULTZ

Truls Berntsen didn’t write it down. Didn’t need to. He had a good memory for names that brought him closer to the leather seats in an Audi Q5 2.0 6-speed manual. He used his jacket sleeve to erase the letters.

The beggar looked up as Truls passed on his way out. Brown doggy eyes. There was probably a band of beggars and a big, fat car waiting somewhere. Mercedes, wasn’t that what they liked? The church bell rang. According to the price list, a Q5 cost 666,000 kroner. If there was a hidden message in those figures, it went way over Truls Berntsen’s head.

‘You look good,’ Beate said as she inserted the key into the lock. ‘Got a new finger, as well.’

‘Made in Hong Kong,’ Harry said, rubbing the short titanium stump.

He observed the small, pale woman as she unlocked the door. The short, thin, blonde hair held in a band. Her skin so fragile and transparent that he could see the fine network of veins in her temple. She reminded him of the hairless mice they used in experiments for cancer research.

‘As you wrote that Oleg was living at the crime scene I thought his keys would give me access.’

‘That lock was probably destroyed ages ago,’ Beate said, pushing the door open. ‘You just walked straight in. We had this lock fitted so that none of the addicts would come back and contaminate the scene.’

Harry nodded. It was typical of crack dens. No point having a lock, they were destroyed immediately. First of all, junkies broke into places where they knew the occupants might have drugs. Second, even those who lived there stole from each other.

Beate pulled the tape to the side, and Harry squeezed in. Clothes and plastic bags hung from hooks in the hall. Harry peered into one of the bags. Paper towel rolls, empty beer cans, a wet bloodstained T-shirt, bits of aluminium foil, a cigarette packet. Against one wall was a stack of Grandiosa boxes, a leaning tower of pizza that rose halfway to the ceiling. Four identical white coat stands. Harry was puzzled until he realised they were probably stolen goods they had been unable to convert into cash. He remembered that in junkie flats they were forever coming across things someone had thought they could sell at some point. In one place they had found sixty hopelessly out-of-date mobile phones in a bag, in another a partly dismantled moped parked in the kitchen.

Harry stepped into the sitting room. It smelt of a mixture of sweat, beer-soaked wood, wet ash and something sweet which Harry was unable to identify. The room had no furniture in any conventional sense. Four mattresses lay on the floor as if round a campfire. From one protruded a piece of wire bent at ninety degrees, shaped into a Y at the end. The square of wood floor between the mattresses was black with scorch marks around an empty ashtray. Harry assumed the SOC unit had emptied it.

‘Gusto was by the kitchen wall, here,’ Beate said. She had stopped in the doorway between the sitting room and kitchen, and was pointing.

Instead of going into the kitchen Harry stayed by the door and looked around. This was a habit. Not the habit of forensics officers, who worked the scene from the outside, started the fine-combing on the periphery and then made their way bit by bit towards the body. Nor was it the habit of a uniformed officer or a patrol car cop, the first police on the scene, who were aware they might contaminate the evidence with their own prints or, worse, destroy the ones there were. Beate’s people had done what had to be done ages ago. This was the habit of the investigating detective. Who knows he has only one chance to let his sensory impressions, the almost imperceptible details, do their own talking, leave their prints before the cement sets. It had to happen now, before the analytical part of the brain resumed its functioning, the part that demanded fully formulated facts. Harry used to define intuition as simple, logical conclusions drawn from normal impressions that the brain was unable, or too slow, to convert into something comprehensible.