Cockroaches(77)

“How did you find me?” he asked once they were outside.

“I spoke to Tonje Wiig. Do you come here often?”

“Not sure how often often is, but I like to keep up-to-date. And I meet useful people here.”

“Like people from the Swedish and Danish embassies?”

The gold tooth glinted. “As I said, I like to keep up-to-date. What’s up?”

“Everything.”

“Oh yes?”

“I know who you’re after. And I know the two cases are connected.”

Løken’s smile vanished.

“The funny thing is, when I first got here I found myself a stone’s throw from the place you had under surveillance.”

“You don’t say.” It was hard to decide if there was any sarcasm in Løken’s voice.

“Inspector Crumley took me on a sightseeing trip up the river. She showed me a house belonging to a Norwegian who’d moved a whole temple from Burma to Bangkok. He had a conversation with the ambassador the day he died, but we haven’t been able to get hold of him. I met his friend, Bork, at the funeral, and he said he was away on business. But you know Ove Klipra, don’t you?”

Løken didn’t answer.

“Well, the connection didn’t strike me until I was watching a football match earlier on.”

“A football match?”

“The world’s most famous Norwegian happens to play for Klipra’s favorite club.”

“So?”

“Do you know what Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s number is?”

“No, why on earth should I?”

“Well, boys all over the world do, and you can buy his shirt in sports shops from Cape Town to Vancouver. Sometimes adults buy the shirt as well.”

Løken nodded as he stared intently at Harry. “Number 20,” he said.

“As in the picture. A couple of other things struck me as well. The shaft of the knife we found in Molnes’s back had a special glass mosaic and a professor of art history has told us it was a very old knife from northern Thailand, probably made by the Shan people. I spoke to him earlier this evening. He told me the Shan people had also spread to parts of Burma, where among other things they built temples. A characteristic feature of these temples was that the windows and doors were often decorated with the same type of glass mosaic as on the knife. I looked in on the professor on the way here and showed him one of your photos. He had absolutely no doubt that this was a window in a Shan temple, Løken.”

They could hear that the speaker had started. The voice sounded metallic and shrill in the loudspeakers.

“Job well done, Hole. What now?”

“Now you tell me what’s going on behind the scenes and I’ll take over the rest of the investigation.”

Løken roared with laughter. “You’re joking, aren’t you?”

Harry wasn’t.

“An interesting suggestion, Hole, but I don’t think that will wash. My bosses—”

“I don’t think suggestion is the right word, Løken. Try ultimatum.”

Løken laughed even louder. “You’ve got cojones, I’ll give you that, Hole. Just what makes you think you’re in a position to impose an ultimatum?”

“That you will have an immense problem when I explain to the Bangkok Police Chief what’s going on.”

“They’ll boot you out, Hole.”

“For what? First of all, my mandate here is to investigate a murder, not to save the arses of some bureaucrats in Oslo. I personally don’t have an objection to you trying to haul in a pedophile, but it’s not my responsibility. And when parliament gets to hear that they’ve been kept in the dark about an illegal investigation, my guess is that a few others are in far more danger of being given the sack than me. Way I see it, the chances of unemployment are greater if I become an accessory and keep this to myself. Cigarette?”

Harry held out a newly opened packet of twenty Camel. Løken shook his head, then changed his mind. Harry lit up for both of them, and they sat in two chairs beside the wall. From the hall came the sound of loud applause.

“Why didn’t you just let it go, Hole? You’ve known for a long time that your job here was to tie things up neatly and avoid a fuss, so why couldn’t you have bent with the wind and saved yourself and us a whole lot of trouble?”

Harry inhaled deeply and blew out in one long exhalation. Most of the smoke stayed inside.

“I started smoking Camel again this autumn,” Harry said, patting his pocket. “I had a girlfriend once who smoked Camel. I wasn’t allowed to smoke hers; she thought it could become a bad habit. We went InterRailing and on the train between Pamplona and Cannes I ran out of cigarettes. She said that would teach me a lesson. The journey was almost ten hours, and in the end I had to go and bum a cigarette off someone in another compartment while she puffed away on her Camels. Weird, eh?”