'Have you only talked to men?' he asked.
'The theory is that he went into the men's changing room to change, isn't it?'
'Then he walked the streets of Morristown like any normal person, yes. Anything new on yesterday's hold-up in Grřnlandsleiret?'
'Depends on what you mean by new. It's more a carbon copy, I would say. Same clothes and AG3. Used a hostage to speak. Took money from the ATM, all over in one minute and fifty seconds. No clues. In short…'
'The Expeditor,' Harry said.
'What's this?' Beate raised the cup and peered into it.
'Cappuccino. Regards from Halvorsen.'
'Coffee with milk?' She wrinkled her nose.
'Let me guess. Your dad said he never trusted anyone who didn't drink black coffee?'
He regretted it immediately he saw Beate's expression of surprise. 'Sorry,' he mumbled. 'I didn't mean to…that was stupid of me.'
'So what do we do now?' Beate hastened to ask while fidgeting with the coffee-cup handle. 'We're back to square one.'
Harry collapsed in the chair and contemplated the toes of his boots. 'Go to prison.'
'What?'
'Go straight to prison.' He sat up. 'Do not pass GO. Do not collect two thousand kroner.'
'What are you talking about?'
'Monopoly cards. That's what we have left. Trying our luck. In prison. Have you got the number of Botsen prison?'
* * *
'This is a waste of time,' Beate said.
Her voice echoed between the walls of the Culvert as she jogged along beside Harry.
'Maybe,' he said. 'Like ninety per cent of all investigation work.'
'I've read all the reports and the interview tapescripts that have ever been done. He never says anything. Except for a load of irrelevant philosophical rubbish.'
Harry pressed the intercom button beside the grey iron door at the end of the tunnel.
'Have you heard the old adage about looking for what you've lost in the light? I suppose it is meant to illustrate human foolishness. To me it makes good sense.'
'Hold your IDs up to the camera,' said the loudspeaker.
'What's the point of me coming if you're going to talk to him on your own?' Beate asked, nipping in behind Harry.
'It's a method Ellen and I used when we questioned suspects. One of us always ran the interview while the other just sat listening. If the interview was getting into a rut, we had a break. If I had done the talking, I would go out and Ellen would start up about other mundane things. Like giving up smoking or everything on TV was crap nowadays. Or she noticed how much she paid in rent since she had split up with her bloke. After they had chatted for a while, I would poke my head in and say something had cropped up and she would have to take over.'
'Did it work?'
'Every time.'
They went up the stairs to the barrier in front of the prison concourse. The prison officer behind the thick bulletproof glass nodded to them and pressed a button. 'Warder will be along in a minute,' came the nasal voice.
The prison warder was squat with bulging muscles and a dwarf's waddle. He led them to the cell block. A three-storey-high gallery with rows of light blue cell doors encircling a rectangular hall. Wire netting towered up between the floors. There was no one to be seen and the silence was only broken by a door being slammed shut somewhere.
Harry had been here many times before, but it always seemed absurd to him to think that behind all these doors were the people whom society thought fit to keep locked up against their will. He didn't quite know why he found the thought so monstrous, but it was something to do with seeing the physical manifestation of publicly institutionalised retribution for crime. The scales and the sword.
The warder's bunch of keys jangled as he unlocked a door inscribed with VISITORS in black letters. 'Here you are. Just knock when you're ready to leave.'
They stepped in and the door banged to behind them. In the ensuing silence Harry's attention was caught by the low intermittent hum of a neon tube and the plastic flowers on the wall, which cast pale shadows across the washed-out watercolours. A man was sitting erectly on a chair, placed exactly in the middle of the yellow wall behind a table. His forearms rested on the table on either side of a chessboard; his hair was drawn back tightly behind his ears. He was wearing a smooth overall-like uniform. The well-defined eyebrows and the shadow which fell on the straight nose formed a clear T every time the neon tube blinked. It was predominantly his expression, however, that Harry remembered from the funeral, the conflicting combination of suffering and a poker face which reminded Harry of someone.
Harry motioned to Beate to sit by the door. He took a chair to the table and sat down opposite Raskol. 'Thank you for taking the time to meet us.'