When he felt the two arms around him and his feet were off the ground he knew it wouldn’t make any difference. He tried to shout, but the air his vocal cords needed to vibrate had been squeezed out of him. He saw the starry sky rotating slowly before it was hidden by an upholstered car ceiling.
He felt hot, tingling breath on his neck and looked through the Corolla windscreen. The man with the sunglasses was standing by the taxi and passing some notes through the driver’s window. The grip on Løken loosened and in one long, trembling breath he inhaled the filthy air as if it were springwater.
The taxi driver rolled up the window and the man with the sunglasses was on his way back toward them. He had just removed his sunglasses, and as he stepped into the light from the damaged headlamp, Løken recognized him.
“Jens Brekke?” he whispered in astonishment.
48
Friday, January 24
“Jens Brekke?” Liz burst out.
Harry nodded.
“Impossible! What about his alibi, the goddamn foolproof tape showing he called his sister at eight?”
“Yes, he did call her, but not from his office. I asked why on earth he would ring his workaholic sister at home during work hours. He said he’d forgotten what time it was in Norway.”
“And?”
“Have you ever heard of a currency broker who forgets what time it is in another country?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Everything became clear when I saw that Klipra had a similar machine to Brekke’s. After shooting Klipra he called his sister’s answerphone, knowing there was no one there, from Klipra’s office and took the tape with him. It shows when he rang, but not where from. We never considered the possibility that the tape may be from another recorder. But I can prove a tape was removed from Klipra’s office.”
“How?”
“Do you remember that early on the afternoon of the seventh of January a call was made to Klipra on the ambassador’s mobile phone? It’s not on any of the tapes in his office.”
Liz laughed. “That asshole fabricated a watertight alibi and sat in prison waiting to play the trump card so it would look as convincing as possible?”
“I think I can hear admiration in your voice, Inspector.”
“It’s purely professional. Do you think he planned it all from the beginning?”
Harry looked at his watch. His brain had begun to Morse through a message that something was wrong.
“If there’s one thing I’m confident of it’s that everything Brekke has done was planned. He hasn’t left a single detail to chance.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Well,” he said, placing an empty glass against his face, “he told me. He hates risks. He won’t play unless he knows he’s going to win.”
“I guess you’ve worked out how he killed the ambassador too, then?”
“First of all, he followed the ambassador down into the underground car park. The receptionist can vouch for that. Then, he took the lift back up. The girl who he asked out in the lift can vouch for that. Probably he killed the ambassador in the car park, stabbed him in the back with the Sami knife as the ambassador was getting into the car, took his keys and dumped him in the boot. Then he locked the car, went over to the lift and waited until someone pressed the button so that he could be sure to have another witness on his way back up.”
“He even asked her out so that she would remember him.”
“Right. If someone else had appeared he would have concocted some other plan. Then he blocked all incoming calls to make it look as if he was busy, took the lift down again and drove to Klipra’s in the ambassador’s car.”
“But if he killed the ambassador in the parking lot he would have been caught on camera.”
“Why do you think that CCTV tape went missing? Of course no one had tried to sabotage Brekke’s alibi. He made Jim Love give him the tape. The evening we met him at the boxing match he was in a rush to get back to the office. Not to talk to American clients but to meet Jim Love so that he could get in and record over him killing the ambassador. And reprogram the timer so that it would look as if someone was trying to sabotage his alibi.”
“Why didn’t he just remove the original tape?”
“He’s a perfectionist. He knew some bright young detective would realize sooner or later that the recording and the time didn’t match.”
“How?”
“Because he used another evening’s tape to record over the scene in question. Sooner or later the police would talk to employees in the building who could testify that they had driven past the camera between five o’clock and half past on the seventh of January. The proof that the tape has been tampered with is of course that they’re not on the recording. The rain and the wet tire tracks meant we clicked faster than we would otherwise have done.”