“Fine.” Harry sucked his teeth. “I was wondering if you could invite Ivar Løken to dinner tonight between seven and ten.”
She knew how to maintain a mask well enough to avoid too much embarrassment. After he had explained the background, she even agreed. Harry clinked the porcelain a bit more, said he had to be going and made a sudden, clumsy exit.
32
Saturday, January 18
Anyone can break into a house—all you do is stick a jimmy in the door frame next to the lock and lean against it until the splinters fly. But breaking in, with the emphasis on “in” and not “breaking,” in such a way that the occupant is not aware he has had uninvited guests, is an art. An art which Sunthorn had mastered to perfection, it transpired.
Ivar Løken lived in an apartment complex on the other side of Phra Pinklao Bridge, and Sunthorn and Harry had been parked outside for almost an hour when they saw him leave. They waited for ten minutes until they were sure that Løken wouldn’t come back for something he had forgotten.
The security was somewhat relaxed. Two uniformed men stood by the garage door chatting; they glanced up, registered a white man and a relatively well-dressed Thai go over to the lift, and resumed their conversation.
When Harry and Sunthorn were in front of Løken’s door on the thirteenth floor, or 12B as it said on the lift button, Sunthorn took out two picklocks, one in each hand, which he inserted in the lock. He removed them almost at once.
“Take it easy,” Harry whispered. “Don’t get stressed. We’ve got all the time in the world. Try some other picklocks.”
“I haven’t got any others.”
Sunthorn smiled and pushed the door open.
Harry couldn’t believe it. Perhaps Nho hadn’t been joking when he hinted darkly about Sunthorn’s occupation before he joined the police. But if he hadn’t been a lawbreaker before, he certainly was now, Harry thought, as he took off his shoes and stepped into the darkened flat. Liz had explained that to get a search warrant they needed the signature of a lawyer and that would have meant informing the Chief of Police. She thought that might be problematic as he had expressly ordered them to focus all their efforts on Jens Brekke. Harry had pointed out he wasn’t under the Chief’s jurisdiction and he would hang around Løken’s flat to see if there was anything going on. She had got the picture and responded that she wanted to know as little as possible about Harry’s plans. However, she commented that Sunthorn was often good company.
“Go down to the car and wait,” Harry whispered. “If Løken turns up, call his number from the car phone and let it ring three times, no more, OK?”
Sunthorn nodded and was gone.
Harry switched on the light after making sure there were no windows overlooking the street, located the telephone and checked the dial tone. Then he had a look around. It was a bachelor pad, devoid of all ornaments and warmth. Three bare walls, the fourth covered with bookshelves packed with books, both vertical and horizontal, and a modest portable TV. The natural center in the large room was a wooden table with trestles for legs and an architect’s lamp.
In a corner there were two open photographic bags and a camera stand leaning against the wall. The table was covered with strips of paper, presumably offcuts, because there were two pairs of scissors, one large and one small, in the middle.
Two cameras, a Leica and a Nikon F5 with a telephoto lens, stared blindly up at Harry. Beside them were night-vision binoculars. Harry had seen them before; they were an Israeli brand he had used on surveillance jobs. The batteries reinforced all the external light sources and allowed you to see, even in what to the naked eye appeared as total darkness.
A door in the flat led to the bedroom. The bed was unmade, so he assumed Løken belonged to the minority of foreigners in Bangkok who didn’t have a house help. It didn’t cost much, and Harry had been given to understand that foreigners were almost expected to contribute to employment in the country in this way.
Off the bedroom was an en suite bathroom.
He switched on the light and immediately realized why Løken didn’t have a house help.
The bathroom clearly also served as a darkroom. It reeked of chemicals and the walls were plastered with black-and-white photographs. A row of photos had been hung up to dry from a piece of string running across the bath. They showed a man in profile from the chest down and Harry could now see that it wasn’t a window sash blocking the shot: the upper part of the window was an intricate glass mosaic with lotus and Buddha motifs.
A boy who could hardly have been more than ten was being forced to perform fellatio, and the camera had zoomed in so close that Harry could see his eyes. They were blank, distant and apparently unseeing.