The Devil's Star (Harry Hole, #5)

by Jo Nesbø

The signal from the central control room ran through the copper in the exact same cables the son had laid, through the partition between the floors moulded with a factory-made cement mix, up to Crime Squad Chief Inspector Bjarne Møller’s office on the sixth floor. At this moment Møller was sitting and wondering whether he was looking forward to or dreading his impending family holiday in a mountain cabin in Os, outside Bergen. In all probability, Os in July meant dire weather. Now, Bjarne Møller had nothing against exchanging the heatwave that had been forecast for Oslo with a little drizzle, but to keep two highly energetic young boys busy with no resources other than a pack of cards minus its jack of hearts would be a challenge.

He began to trawl through the archives after the others had gone home for the day, to tap into the internal computer network, to print out e-mails and lists of incoming and outgoing telephone calls from people he knew Waaler associated with. In the afternoons he sat in a car near Youngstorget and kept an eye on Herbert’s Pizza. Harry’s theory was that the neo-Nazis frequenting the pizzeria were also smuggling arms. When this theory did not produce any leads he began to shadow Waaler and a number of his colleagues.

It was only an attic flat, but while Camilla Loen’s flat was small and furnished in a strictly minimalist style, this one was large and the decoration was lavish and flashy, like a pastiche of new classicism. However, it was exaggerated to the point that it almost tipped over into being the backdrop for a toga party. Instead of normal sofas and chairs there were reclining arrangements in a sort of Hollywood version of Ancient Rome, and the wooden beams were clad in plaster to form Doric or Corinthian columns. Harry had never grasped the difference, but he did recognise the plaster relief that had been laid directly on the white wall in the hallway. His mother had taken him and Sis to a museum in Copenhagen when they were small and there they had seen Bertel Thorvaldsen’s Jason and the Golden Fleece. The flat had clearly just been done up. Harry noticed newly painted wood and bits of masking tape and could smell the blissful aroma of solvents.

While Wilhelm Barli went to the bedroom to find some recent photos of Lisbeth and some clothes to give Ivan – the dog – a scent, Harry quickly spoke to the other two in a low voice: ‘OK, she could be absolutely anywhere. She could have left him, she could have had a funny turn, she could have said she was going somewhere else and he didn’t realise. There are a million possibilities, but she could also be lying in the back seat of a car at this very moment, doped up, being raped by four kids who freaked out at the sight of her bikini. I don’t want you to look for anything specific. Just search.’ Beate and Ivan nodded to show they had understood.

Bearing in mind that they had spent so much time together over the last two years, she knew surprisingly little about him, but he never made a secret of the fact that he had been with a great many women in his previous life. He used to say it was because he had been searching so desperately for her. He had turned them away as soon as he realised they weren’t her and he had continued his restless search until one fine autumn day two years ago they had met in the bar of the Grand Hotel Europa in Wenceslas Square. That was the most wonderful description of promiscuity she had ever heard. More wonderful than hers at any rate, which had been for money. ‘What do you do in Oslo?’ ‘Business,’ he said. ‘Why will you never tell me exactly what it is that you do?’ ‘Because we love each other.’ He closed the door quietly behind him, and she heard his footsteps going down the stairs.

‘What are you doing here on your own?’ he asked. She shrugged her shoulders and took a sip from her glass. ‘Anders is away, travelling, and won’t be back until this evening. So I am indulging myself a little.’ ‘Has he gone far?’ ‘Somewhere in Europe. You know how it is. They never tell you anything.’ ‘What does he do?’ ‘He sells fittings for churches and chapels. Altarpieces, pulpits, crosses and suchlike. Used and new.’ ‘Mm. And he does that in Europe?’ ‘When a church in Switzerland needs a new pulpit, it could well come from Ålesund. And the old one may well end up being restored in Stockholm or Narvik. He travels all the time.

A red car parked by the kerb on the other side of the road. If Harry had been in the slightest bit interested in cars, he would perhaps have known that this exclusive toy was a Tommykaira ZZ-R. ‘Fuck you,’ Harry muttered under his breath and stepped out to cross the road. A taxi shot past him with a blaring horn. He crossed over to the sports car and stood by the driver’s door. A blackened window was lowered without a sound. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ Harry wheezed. ‘Are you spying on me?’ ‘Good evening, Harry,’ Tom Waaler yawned. ‘I’m keeping Camilla Loen’s flat under surveillance, watching who comes and goes. You know, it’s not just a hollow phrase that criminals go back to the scene of the crime.’ ‘Yes, it is. That’s exactly what it is,’ Harry said.

She had been thinking for several days now about how she could get him to notice her, but inspiration had deserted her. Going over to talk to him would not be a bad start. She would have to wait until an opportunity offered itself. At last week’s choir practice he had spoken up in a loud, clear voice about his past, about how he had been a Philadelphian, and about how he had been a neo-Nazi before he was saved! One of the other girls had heard a rumour that he had a big Nazi tattoo somewhere on his body. They were agreed that it was terrible, but Marit could feel how the very thought made her body tremble with excitement.

He stopped and peered down at her. He was taller than she had anticipated. ‘Do you know Jesus?’ Marit asked in a loud, clear voice and with a smile. The man’s face was bright red and his vision was blurred. The conversation behind her had suddenly died, and out of the corner of her eye she could see that Roy and the girls on the steps had turned towards them. ‘Unfortunately, I don’t,’ the man snuffled. ‘And neither do you, my girl, but perhaps you know Roy Kvinsvik?’ Marit could feel her blushes suffusing her face, and her follow-up – Do you know he’s just waiting to meet you? – became ensnared in her throat. ‘Well?’ the man asked. ‘Is he here?’ She took in the man’s cropped skull and his boots. She suddenly went very red. Was this man a neo-Nazi, someone from Roy’s past? Someone come to avenge his betrayal? Or to persuade him to return? ‘I . . .’

He had got her the job in the bar at Head On. And because of the pills she hadn’t felt like going straight from work to Blindern University, where she was studying to become a sociologist. However, the time for Petter, pills and dreams of becoming a sociologist was over and one day she found herself alone with debts for unfinished studies and pills to pay off, and a job at the most boring bar in Oslo. So Barbara dropped everything, borrowed money from her parents and went off to Lisbon to get her life back on an even keel and perhaps learn a little Portuguese. Lisbon was a wonderful time. The days passed in a whirl, but this didn’t bother her. Time was simply something that came and went, until the money stopped coming, until Marco was no longer ‘true until eternity’ and the fun was over. She returned home a few experiences older; she had learned, for example, that Ecstasy was cheaper in Portugal than in Norway, but it made a mess of your life in just the same way, that Portuguese was an extremely difficult language and that time was a limited, nonrenewable resource.

As usual Wetterlid stared at her boobs while talking to her, and as usual she smiled, automatically pulling her shoulders back as Petter had told her when she was working at Head On. It had become a reflex action. Everyone flaunted what they had. At least, that was what Barbara Svendsen had learned. The courier who had just that moment walked in was an example. She would have bet anything that he was nothing to look at under the helmet, racing goggles and the handkerchief tied round his mouth. That was probably why he kept them on. Instead he said that he knew which office the parcel was for and walked slowly down the corridor in his tight cycling shorts so that she could have a really good look at his muscular buttocks. The cleaning lady who was due soon was another example. She was a Buddhist or a Hinduist, or whatever you call them, and Allah said that she had to conceal her body beneath a pile of bed linen, but she had excellent teeth, so what did she do? Yes, she went round smiling like a crocodile on E. Flaunt, flaunt, flaunt. Barbara was watching the second hand on the clock when the door opened.

in before going on. ‘According to the American psychologist, Joel Norris, the serial killer goes through a mental process involving six phases with each killing. The first is called the aura phase where the person gradually loses their grip on reality. The totem phase, the fifth phase, is the killing itself, the serial killer’s climax, or, to be more precise, the anti-climax, because the killing is never able to fulfil the hopes and expectations of catharsis and purification that the killer associates with the taking of a life. That’s why the killer goes straight into the sixth phase, the depressed phase. This in turn leads into a new aura phase in which he builds himself up, ready for the next killing.’

Nygård fidgeted with his cup. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ ‘You could say that. I found a pentagram. I suppose that since you deal with the interiors of churches you’ll know what that is.’ ‘You mean a five-pointed star?’ ‘Yes, drawn with one continuous line. Do you have any idea what a sign like that might symbolise?’ Harry’s head was bent over the table, but he was furtively studying Nygård’s face. ‘Quite a lot,’ Nygård said. ‘Five is the most important figure in black magic. Did it have one or two points sticking upwards?’ ‘One.’ ‘So it’s not the sign of evil then. The sign you’re describing might symbolise both vitality and passion. Where did you find it?’ ‘On a beam above her bed.’ ‘Oh, I see,’ Nygård said. ‘That’s a simple one then.’ ‘Oh?’ ‘It’s what we call a mare cross, or a devil’s star.’ ‘A mare cross?’ ‘A pagan symbol. They used to carve it over beds or doorways to keep away the mare.’ ‘The mare?’ ‘The mare, yes. As in night-mare. A female demon who sits on the chest of a sleeping person and rides him so that he has bad dreams. The pagans thought she was a spirit. Not that strange since “mare” is derived from the Indo-Germanic “mer”.’ ‘Have to confess that my Indo-Germanic is not up to much.’ ‘It means “death”.’ Nygård stared down into his cup of coffee. ‘Or to be more precise, “murder”.’

‘We’ve sold almost no tickets. Well, apart from for the opening night – for that the tickets went like hot cakes. People are so bloodthirsty, they can smell a scandal. Basically, Harry, we are entirely dependent on rave reviews to pull this one off. But right now . . .’ Wilhelm banged a fist on the white tablecloth and the coffee jumped in the air. ‘. . . I can’t think of anything less important than bloody business!’ Wilhelm stared at Harry. All the signs were that the outburst would continue when, without any prior indication, an invisible hand wiped the fury from his expression. He was dazed for a moment, as if he didn’t know where he was. Then his face fell apart and he quickly hid it in his hands. Harry saw the head waiter send them a strange, hope-filled look. ‘I apologise,’ Wilhelm mumbled from behind his fingers. ‘I don’t usually . . . I’m not asleep . . . Oh shit, I’m so theatrical!’ He sobbed, a sound that was somewhere between laughing and crying, he hit the table again with his hand and pulled a grimace which he managed to twist into a kind of desperate smirk.

When it became light outside he was beyond everything. He sat, he heard and he saw, but he was dreaming. The thud of the Aftenposten on the stairs woke him up. He lifted his head and focused on the devil’s star, which was no longer dancing. Nothing danced. It was over. He had seen the pattern. The pattern of a benumbed man in a desperate search for genuine feelings. A naive idiot who believed that where there was someone who loved, there was love, that where there were questions, there were answers. Harry Hole’s pattern. In a fit of fury he headbutted the cross on the wall. He saw sparks in front of his eyes and he dropped onto his bed. His gaze fell on the alarm clock: 5.55. The duvet cover was wet and warm. Then – as if someone had switched off the light – he passed out. She was pouring coffee into his cup.

High priority,’ Harry said, pulling out the plug and rolling out the projector trolley past an astonished Ivarsson. Back in his office, Harry put the transparency on the projector, pointed the square of light towards the map and switched off the main light. In the darkened, windowless room he could hear his own breathing as he twisted the transparency round, moved the projector closer and further away and adjusted the focus of the black outline of a star until it matched. It did match. Of course it matched. He stared at the map, circled two street numbers and made a couple of telephone calls. Then he was ready.

The man staring up at him from the bunk didn’t look like a killer. Harry knew that didn’t mean a thing. Sometimes they looked like what they were; sometimes they didn’t. This one was good-looking, clean cut, solidly built, short dark hair and blue eyes that may once have been like his mother’s, but over the years had become his own. Harry would soon be 40, Sven Sivertsen was over 50. Harry felt sure that most people would have guessed the other way round. Sivertsen, for one reason or another, was wearing the red prison working trousers and jacket. ‘Good evening, Sivertsen. I’m Inspector Hole. Would you mind standing up and turning round.’ Sivertsen raised an eyebrow. Harry dangled the handcuffs in front of him. ‘It’s the rules.’ Sivertsen got up without a word, and Harry clicked the handcuffs into place and pushed him back down on the bunk.

It must sound cynical, but you can take it from me that every declaration of love that came out of my mouth was just as genuine and sincere as those my stepmother received from my father. I gave them everything I had, until it was over and I showed them the door. I couldn’t afford a sanatorium. It always ended like that and that was how I thought it would always be. Until one autumn day I went into the café in Grand Hotel Europa in Wenceslas Square and there she was. Eva. Yes, that was her name, and it’s not true that paradoxes do not exist, Hole. The first thing that struck me was that she was no beauty; she just behaved like one. However, people who are convinced that they are beautiful are beautiful. I have a certain knack with women and I went over to her. She didn’t tell me to go to hell; she just treated me with a distant courtesy that drove me wild.’ Sivertsen gave a knowing smile. ‘There’s no stronger aphrodisiac for a man than a woman who’s not in love. She was twenty-six years younger than me, had more style than I will ever have and – most of all – she didn’t need me. She could continue with her work that she thinks I know nothing about, whipping German businessmen and giving them blow jobs.’ ‘So why didn’t she?’ Harry asked, puffing smoke at Iggy.