Cockroaches(96)

“When a victim lets the air out of his lungs and closes his mouth around a gun barrel there will be a vacuum, which means the blood will run into the mouth instead of out of the exit wound. From there it runs into the stomach and leaves behind these small mysteries.”

Harry looked at Løken. “That’s news to me.”

“It would be boring if you knew everything at the age of thirty-something,” Løken said.


Tonje Wiig had rung to say that all the big Norwegian newspapers had phoned and the more bloodthirsty of them had announced their imminent arrival in Bangkok. In Norway, the headlines were focusing for the moment on the daughter of the recently deceased ambassador. Ove Klipra was, despite his status in Bangkok, an unknown name at home. It was true that Kapital had interviewed him a couple of years ago, but as neither Per Ståle Lønning nor Anne Grosvold had had him as a guest on their shows, he had escaped public attention.

“The Ambassador’s Daughter” and the “Unknown Norwegian Magnate” had both been reported shot dead, most probably by intruders or prowlers.

In Thailand, however, photos of Klipra were plastered across the newspapers. The Bangkok Post journalist questioned the police’s theory about a prowler. He wrote that you couldn’t rule out the possibility that Klipra had murdered Runa Molnes and afterward committed suicide. The newspaper also speculated freely on what consequences this might have for the BERTS transport project. Harry was impressed.

However, both countries emphasized that information released by the Thai police had been very sparing.


Harry drove up to the gate of Klipra’s residence and sounded his horn. He had to admit that he had begun to like the big Toyota Jeep. The guard came out and Harry rolled down the window.

“Police. I rang you,” he said.

The guard gave him the obligatory guard’s look before opening the gate.

“Could you unlock the front door for me?” Harry asked.

The guard jumped onto the running board and Harry felt his eyes examining him. Harry parked in the garage. The guard rattled his bunch of keys.

“The main door’s on the other side,” he said, and Harry almost let slip that he already knew. As the guard inserted the key into the lock and was about to twist it, he turned to Harry. “Haven’t I seen you before, sir?”

Harry smiled. What could it have been? The aftershave? The soap he used? Smell is said to be the sense the brain remembers best.

“Very unlikely.”

The guard returned the smile. “Sorry, sir. Must have been someone else. I can’t tell the difference between farangs.”

Harry rolled his eyes, but then he stopped in mid-roll. “Tell me, do you remember a blue embassy car coming here just before Klipra left?”

The guard nodded. “No problem remembering cars. That was a farang as well.”

“What did he look like?”

The guard laughed. “As I said …”

“What was he wearing?”

He shook his head.

“A suit?”

“I think so.”

“A yellow suit. Yellow, like a chicken?”

The guard frowned and fixed him with a stare. “Chicken? No one has a suit like a chicken.”

Harry shrugged. “Well, some people do.”

He stood in the hall where Løken and he had entered and studied a small, round circle in the wall. It looked as if someone had been trying to hang a picture but had given up trying to put in a screw.

He went up to the office, leafed through the documents, mostly at random, switched on the computer, and was asked for a password. He tried “MAN U.” Incorrect.

Polite language, English.

“OLD TRAFFORD.” Incorrect again.

One final attempt before being automatically locked out. He glanced around as if to find a clue in the room. What was his? He chuckled. Of course. The most common password in Norway. He carefully typed in the letters P-A-S-S-W-O-R-D, then pressed enter.

The machine seemed to hesitate for a second. Then it switched itself off and he received a not quite so polite message, black on white, that he had been refused access.

“Shit.”

He tried switching the machine off and on, but there was only a white screen.

He flicked through more papers, found a recent shareholders’ list for Phuridell. A new shareholder, Ellem Ltd, was listed with three percent of the shares. Ellem. A crazy idea struck Harry, but he rejected it.

At the bottom of a drawer he found the manual for the recording device. He looked at his watch and sighed. He would have to start reading. After half an hour, he was playing the tape. Klipra’s voice babbling in Thai for the most part, but he heard Phuridell mentioned a couple of times. After three hours he gave up. The conversation with the ambassador on the day of the murder simply wasn’t on any of the tapes. For that matter, there were no others from that day, either. He stuffed one of the tapes in his pocket, switched off the machine and made sure to give the computer a kick on the way out.