Nemesis(18)

'That's fine, Ola,' Ivarsson said. 'Just tell us what you found.'





Ola laughed nervously. It sounded like the tentative cry of a seagull.





'Well?'





'Espen Vaaland is off sick,' Ola said. 'He knows bank robber turf pretty well. I'll try to get him here tomorrow.'





'What you're trying to say is…?'





Ola's eyes did a racing jig around the table. 'Not a great deal,' he said softly.





'Ola is still relatively new here,' Ivarsson said and Harry noticed how his jaw muscles were beginning to grind. 'Ola demands a hundred per cent certainty when identifying people, and that's laudable, but it's a bit too much to expect when the robber—'





'The killer.'





'—is covered from top to toe, average height, keeps his mouth shut, moves atypically and wears shoes too big for him.' Ivarsson raised his voice. 'So give us the whole list, Ola. Who's in the running?'





'No one.'





'There must be some names!'





'No,' Ola said with a gulp.





'Are you trying to tell us that no one had any suggestions, that all of our volunteer slum rats, zealous undercover boys that they are, who take pride in their daily dealings with the worst scum in Oslo, who in nine out of ten cases hear rumblings about the getaway driver, the man carrying the swag, the lookout, are suddenly unwilling even to hazard a guess?'





'They guessed alright,' Ola said. 'Six names were mentioned.'





'Well, spit them out then, man.'





'I've checked all the names. Three are in the nick. One was seen in Plata market square when the robbery was being committed. One is in Pattaya in Thailand. I've checked that. And there was one all the undercover officers mentioned because he has a similar build and the robbery was so professional, and that is Bjřrn Johansen from the Tveita gang.'





'Oh yes?'





Ola looked as if he wanted to slide off his chair and disappear under the table.





'He's in Ullevĺl hospital, and last Friday he was being operated on for aures alatae.'





* * *





'Aures alatae?'





'Sticky-out ears,' Harry groaned, flicking a drop of sweat off his eyebrow. 'Ivarsson almost exploded. How many have you done?'





'I've just passed twenty-one.' Halvorsen's voice resounded around the walls. As it was early afternoon they had the fitness centre in the basement of the police station almost to themselves.





'Have you taken a short cut or what?' Harry clenched his teeth and managed to increase the rate a little. There was already a pool of sweat around his ergometer bike while Halvorsen's forehead was barely moist.





'So, you haven't got a bean then?' Halvorsen asked, breathing regularly and calmly.





'Unless there's something in what Beate Lřnn said at the end, we haven't got a lot, no.'





'And what did she say?'





'She's working on a program which can make a 3-D image of the robber's head and face from the video pictures.'





'Plus mask?'





'The program uses the information it gets from the pictures. Light, shadow, recesses, protrusions. The tighter the mask, the easier it is to make an image which resembles the person underneath. Nevertheless, it's only a sketch, but Beate says she can use it to match pictures of suspects.'





'Is it the FBI identification program?' Halvorsen turned to Harry and with a certain fascination verified that the sweat stain which had started at the dating agency logo on Harry's chest had now spread to cover the whole of the T-shirt.





'No, she has a better program,' Harry said. 'How far?'





'Twenty-two. Which one?'





'Fusiform gyrus.'





'Microsoft? Apple Mac?'





Harry tapped his forefinger on a bright red forehead. 'Software common to all. Sits in the temporal lobe in the brain and its sole function is to recognise people. That's all it does. It's the bit that makes sure we can distinguish between hundreds and thousands of human faces, but scarcely a dozen rhinos.'





'Rhinos?'





Harry pinched his eyes and tried to blink away the smarting sweat. 'That was an example, Halvorsen, but there's no doubt that Beate Lřnn is a special case. Her fusiform can do a couple of extra turns which, so to speak, allow her to remember all the faces she has seen in her life. And I don't just mean people she knows or has spoken to, but faces behind sunglasses she passed in a crowded street fifteen years ago.'





'You're kidding.'





'Nope.' Harry tucked in his head as he regained enough breath to continue: 'There are only about a hundred known cases like hers. Didrik Gudmundson said that she took a test at Police College and beat several well-known identification programs. The woman is a walking archive of faces. If she asks you Haven't I seen you somewhere before? you can take it from me, it's not just a chat-up line.'